Project Gibbon

For the first two weeks, Ben a PhD grad student from Columbia, Akbar a masters candidate at University of Indonesia, and Taufan, a conservation worker from Bandung University and I took a road trip around western and central Java sampling Hylobates Molloch or ‘oa’ as the Indonesians call the gibbons. Ben, checking in at 6 foot and 3 inches and I, sat cramped sideways in the back of a stinky old, “back-door-has-to-be-opened-from-the-outside” beat up Suzuki jeep. Gibbons are extremely hard to track in the forest, so with our limited time and ample laziness we took blood samples from pets and zoo animals for DNA analysis. Upholding rigorous scientific methodologies, we interviewed their owners of their pet gibbons' provenance of capture to locate them geographically.  There are only 2000 gibbons left in the world today. Gibbons are a species of ape. Their current route to extinction  is aided by their loyal mating behavior. They mate for life, and if one made dies or is captured the remaining mate remains single for the rest of its life. They have leathery small black faces, is gray fine haired coats, and  long arms and legs specially adapted for swinging through trees. We inspected pet gibbons in the back of gas stations, in backyards, in cages over lakes, in cages outside houses, over a fishpond at a Muslim religious school, etc... Gibbons in captivity have significantly shorter lifespans compared to those left in the wild. Like humans, gibbons in solitary confinement are prone to disease, unsanitary conditions, and depression.

Along the route we would occasionally stop off at natural wonders. We swam in the warm Indian ocean at night, hiked up yellow is hot sulfur waterfalls, drove through rustling tea plantations terraced on mountainsides....

The process of taking blood is rather straightforward. For those interested in attempting this task: (1) first catch the gibbon with a net, slipknot , or by hand. (2) inject it’s muscle tissues with ketamine tranquilizer. (3) Wait  for it to become drowsy and sleepy. (4)  Feel for its vein in its inner thigh. (5) While feeling the pulse of the gibbon’s vein with your left middle finger insert the needle at a 30 to 45° angle right on your finger and then draw the blood into the syringe. (6) Lyse the cells immediately in SDS buffer to prevent clotting (7) Freeze the sample as soon as possible. Although drawing blood is relatively easy, tranquilizing them is not. Like most humans, gibbons don’t enjoy long needles stuck in them. Unlike most humans,  gibbons will bite, jump, swing and screech to avoid being pricked.  Our most difficult encounter with gibbons was at the Bandung Zoo. There, four gibbons live in spacious high ceiling yet affordable black cage.  They would swing 30 feet above us on the top of the cage. We spent hours walking and climbing around the cage attempting to bait them with delicious bananas. The gibbons were smarter than we looked and were content to ignore us  and swing freely high above. Finally, the zookeepers went inside the cage with nets and brought the gibbons down.  We suddenly became the main spectacle for throngs of curious Indonesian spectators who observed us in the cage as strange foreigners catching, tranquilizing and drawing blood from their zoo’s gibbons.