Scientists in Myanmar listened in on the love songs sung by Skywalker gibbons (Hoolock tianxing) to find the largest known population of the endangered primate. Every morning, skywalker gibbon couples will wake up and sing to each other, with their voices echoing across the forest canopies. The love songs helped scientists confirm a hunch that the southeast Asian nation has the world’s largest population of Skywalker gibbons. The discovery is described in a study published February 14 in the International Journal of Primatology.
[Related: Primates have been teasing each other for 13 million years.]
“We were able to genetically identify 44 new groups of Skywalker gibbons in Myanmar,” study co-author and University of California, Davis wildlife veterinarian and epidemiologist Tierra Smiley Evans said in a statement.
These primates are technically called Skywalker hoolock gibbons and were named by a group of Star Wars-loving scientists in 2017, after observing them in southwestern China. The gibbons are omnivores, but most of their diet comes from plants and not animals. According to the New England Primate Conservancy, figs are their favorite food to eat and they will also eat spiders and the occasional bird or chicken egg. They are about 32 inches tall on average and weigh between 13 and 15 pounds.
While the exact number of individual Skywalker gibbons is still unknown, they were found in areas previously thought to be occupied by the Eastern hoolock gibbon. Some 2013 population estimates suggested that there may have been up to 65,000 gibbons in the area where the Skywalkers have now been identified.
While these new groups are the largest probable population of Skywalker gibbons in one place, scientists believe that today’s numbers are lower due to limited protected areas,…
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