WATCHING A GIBBON SWINGING across a rainforest canopy, one is reminded of the popular 19th-century song “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” and the lyric “He floats through the air with the greatest of ease.” A gibbon zipping along is a truly glorious, albeit brief, sight. It’s lean, attenuated body arches across 50 feet of open sky, effortlessly grabs a branch, shoots up again, and again, and then vanishes.
Many witnessing such a sight would think they had seen a high-flying monkey. Despite popular perception, gibbons, thank you, are not monkeys. Part of the Hylobatidae family, there are some 20 different species of gibbon, all lumped together in a group called the lesser apes (a misleading designation). The great and lesser categories are sort of like boxing’s weight classes. All…
