Newborns are always a cause for celebration, but this one was extra special. On a routine patrol in the remote forests of Cao Bang, Vietnam, local researchers were overjoyed when they spotted a tiny black bundle clinging to its mother’s furry belly. An infant cao vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus); one of just two to be spotted in the last 14 months.
The sighting is important because the cao vit gibbon is the world’s second rarest ape (after the Hainan black crested gibbon).
Presumed extinct back in the sixties, a small population was rediscovered in northeast Vietnam in 2002, by scientists from the conservation group Fauna & Flora. Now it clings to existence in a single patch of forest, smaller than the size of Luton, on the Vietnam-China border.
The youngster, of unconfirmed age and sex, stuck close to its mother, as she hung out – literally – with a handful of males amidst the straggly vines and lush foliage of a steep-sided ravine.
Watching on in hushed tones, Nguyen Duc Tho, project manager for Fauna & Flora’s cao vit gibbon project, said, "this was the smallest baby gibbon I had ever seen.”
The team were lucky to spot the infant at all, because adults use their long limbs to swing acrobatically through the treetops at speeds of up to 34 miles per hour. Indeed, the cao vit gibbon is easier to hear than it is to see, which conservationists have been using to their benefit.
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Last year, Nguyen Duc Tho and colleagues published a study describing how they use the gibbons’ song to estimate its numbers.
The cao vit gibbon, which lives in family groups, starts the day with a song. The songs of males are highly individual and stable over time, creating unique ‘vocal fingerprints’ which can be recorded by devices left in the forest.
Based on their data, the team predict that the world is currently home to 74 wild cao vit gibbons, which belong to 11 different family groups.
Although numbers are still perilously low, they are thought to be increasing. Fauna & Flora has been working in two key protected areas to safeguard the gibbons from poaching and habitat loss, and to conduct surveys and research.
"This is amazing and an encouraging sign of hope for the species’ population, which is currently low, and highlights the critical importance of long-term-ongoing monitoring and conservation efforts in Cao Bang,” says Nguyen Duc Tho.
Main image: Cao Bang forests, Vietnam/Getty
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