Moloch Gibbon - Hylobates moloch

Habitat: Gibbons are natives of South-east Asia, from Assam to Indonesia, and are all endangered by the steady destruction of their rain forest habitat. The Moloch Gibbon lives only in mature tropical rainforests in the western half of the grossly overpopulated island of Java, so it is not surprising that this is the most endangered of all gibbons.

Diet: Their diet consists mainly of fruit and some leaves, and in the wild they seldom need to come down to the ground.

Characteristics: They are superbly designed for life in the trees, with long arms and hook-like fingers specialised to swing rapidly from branch to branch (a process known as "brachiation"), often covering several meters in a single swingAll gibbons are territorial, and the most have developed a distinctive call, or "song" whereby the male and female each make their own contribution to an elaborate duet. Atypically Molochs do not sing duets. Males sing around dawn and females later in the day

Conservation: There are certainly fewer than 2,000 left in the wild, fragmented into over 20 isolated forest patches. Only three of these areas are protected within national parks, and none has more than 100 gibbons; even so, they probably represent the best hope for the survival of the species.

Park Information: Howletts Wild Animal Park holds 50% of the worlds captive population. We currently house 8 males and 12 females between the parks. Indeed, there are no other breeding pairs in Europe! Eight infants have been born and reared here since 1988.

Breeding: A co-operative breeding programme has been started, but as gibbons do not reach maturity until six or seven years old, and females produce one infant every two or three years, the captive population is growing only slowly.

Culture: Gibbons live in monogamous family groups; when the offspring reach maturity they normally leave their parents and form new pairs to start families of their own. Males and females are about the same size, though in some species (but not in the two at Howletts) they can differ strikingly in colour.