Lar gibbon

Lar gibbons eat ripe fruit.

They also eat leaves, flowers and bugs. They taste fruit to see if it is ready.

Lar gibbons mostly eat ripe fruit from forest trees and climbing vines. They also eat leaves, flowers and insects.

They are picky eaters! A gibbon tastes a fruit and only eats it if it is ripe. In the fruiting season, gibbons come back to the same trees again and again to pick the ripest fruit. Because they eat so much fruit, they probably help spread seeds through the forest.

Lar gibbons are largely frugivorous, eating ripe fruit of tropical trees and woody climbers, along with leaves, flowers and insects (Animal Diversity Web). They are selective: fruits are tasted and accepted or rejected by ripeness, and the same sources are revisited during peak season to take the ripest fruit each time.

Food sources in overlapping parts of neighboring territories may be shared. As frugivores, lar gibbons are most likely important seed dispersers, although ADW notes that little more is known about their wider role in the ecosystem.

Gibbon families sing together in the morning.

Mom and dad sing a song together. It is very loud!

Lar gibbons live in small families of two to six: usually a mother, a father and their young. Each family has its own home area.

Every morning, between sunrise and noon, the mother and father sing a long, loud duet together. The female starts the "great call" and the male answers. A song lasts about 11 minutes and can be heard up to a kilometer away. It tells other gibbon families, "This part of the forest is ours."

Lar gibbons live in groups of two to six and are mostly monogamous, though polyandry has been recorded where good resources are scarce (Animal Diversity Web). Groups defend home ranges in encounters with neighbors.

Mated pairs sing complex duets: an introductory sequence, a great call begun by the female and answered by the male, and an interlude of male and female notes. Duets occur between sunrise and noon, peaking mid-morning, average about 11 minutes and carry up to a kilometer; they signal territory to neighbors, and researchers find gibbon groups mainly by their songs.

Listen to the recording at the start of this page.

It is two lar gibbons hooting together at a zoo.

At the start of this page you can play a real recording of a pair of lar gibbons hooting together at Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark.

In the wild, gibbon pairs sing long duets in the morning that can be heard up to a kilometer away through the forest. Listen for the rising hoots: can you hear two voices?

The recording on this page is a pair of lar gibbons hooting at Copenhagen Zoo, so it is a captive pair. Wild duets follow a structure of introductory notes, the female's great call with the male's answer, and a variable interlude, averaging about 11 minutes (Animal Diversity Web).

There are fewer lar gibbons than before.

Their forests are being cut down. Some people catch them to sell as pets.

The lar gibbon is listed as Endangered. Its forests are being cut down, and baby gibbons are caught to be sold as pets, which is against the law.

Lar gibbons do best in protected areas such as national parks. Because a mother has a baby only every few years, it takes a long time for numbers to recover.

The IUCN assessed Hylobates lar as Endangered in 2020 (Brockelman and Geissmann). Animal Diversity Web names the illegal pet trade, especially in Thailand, where gibbons are hunted, captured, traded and exploited, and growing deforestation as the main threats; some villagers also hunt them for food.

Protected areas give populations the best survival rates. The species has already disappeared from China, and its slow reproduction, one young about every 3.5 years, limits recovery.