Let’s Focus on the Singing, Swinging Mothers!

In 2014, OuTrop’s field researchers noticed the arrival of many new faces in the Sabangau peat-swamp forest. I am not just talking about the wonderful new additions to our field team, but we also rejoiced at the sight of six newborn non-human primates, three of which were southern Bornean gibbons. As a result of the baby boom, we decided to change the focus of the Gibbon Project to look more closely at mother-infant relationships and infant development.

Southern Bornean gibbons are born with white fur and have an amazing ability to instantly cling to their mother soon after birth, even when swinging through the canopy at full speed! Infants will remain dependent on their mother until they are weaned at around 1-2 years old, after which they are considered juvenile and start to travel more independently. They eventually reach sexual maturity at around 7 years and will ordinarily disperse from their birth group to search for a mate and start a new family of their own. You can see the care and attention the adult female of Group Karate gives to her 1 month old infant on our OuTrop YouTube channel here.

In 2009, an OuTrop Masters student carried out a study of play behaviour in infant and juvenile southern Bornean gibbons. The study suggested that infants played five times more often than juveniles, engaging in more self-play and play directed at their mothers. Apart from this, little research has been carried out on mother-infant relationships and infant development in all gibbons.

With many exciting but unanswered questions, OuTrop’s new research focus aims to give us a more detailed insight into the changes observed in mother-infant interactions as the infant develops, and to investigate if there are differences between male and female infants. We’ll update you further as we learn more in this area – for OuTrop’s Gibbon Project at the moment, it seems like Mother’s Day is every day!