Skywalker Hoolock Gibbon (Hoolock tianxing)

Dear Ding,

Great picture!

Thanks again for everything!!!!

@Elias Thanks! It's a great pleasure to visit the zoo with a fellow Zoochatter!

All the hoolock gibbon are fascinating, but the H. tianxing stand out as particularly amazing (also given their life history and present global status)!

Shanghai the only one to maintain Skywalker hoolock or are other PR China zoos involved?

@Kifaru Bwana There're three H. tianxing on public display in Chinese zoos. The other two are located in Beijing and Hefei, both represented in the Zoochat gallery. All three are males. The one in Shanghai is in his 30s.

@Ding Lingwei, no chance of some female couxterparts in sight and a potential breeding program ex situ?

@Kifaru Bwana Unless new females are rescued from wild or identified from the current H. leuconedys population. Both scenarios seem unlikely.

@Kifaru Bwana Apparently I underestimated the age of this individual. According to a social media post of the zoo today, the male came to Shanghai from Kunming Zoo as a juvenile in 1984, which makes him at least 41 years old.

A quote from IUCN Red List on Hoolock tianxing:
QUOTE
"In Myanmar, commercial logging is ongoing, and hunting is serious problem. Nearly every year, a few small juveniles and infants of hoolock gibbons (mostly H. leuconedys) are illegally exported to China (Ni et al., 2018)."
UNQOUTE

It seems that every year some hoolock gibbons from this population end up in the P.R. of China in the illegal animal trade.

@Kifaru Bwana As the quote puts it, most hoolock gibbons illegally exported to China are H. leuconedys, which explains why there's a breeding program for the species in Chinese zoos. For H. tianxing, the only case I can confirm is the Hefei male, which was confiscated in 1987, and it is unknown whether it originated from China or Myanmar.