Thad Q. Bartlett - The Gibbons of Khao Yai

The Gibbons
of Khao Yai

First published 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright 2009 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

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This book was set in 10/12 Palatino.

ISBN: 9780131915046 (pbk)

Cover Design: Margaret Kenselaar

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bartlett, Thad Q.

The gibbons of Khao Yai: seasonal variation in behavior and ecology / Thad Q. Bartlett.

p. cm. (Primate field studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-13-191504-5

1. GibbonsBehaviorThailandUtthayan hfng Chat Khao Yai. 2. GibbonsEcologyThailandUtthayan hfng Chat Khao Yai. I. Title.

QL737.P96B355 2009

599.88209593dc22 2008025788

Contents

It has now been many years since I first visited Khao Yai National Park to begin my dissertation research, nevertheless, I can still remember the moment when I saw wild gibbons in person for the first time. I had come to the park with Warren Brockelman, who by that time had been working in Khao Yai, off and on, for well over a decade. I was following Warren through the forest as he oriented me to the trail system and topography of the study area. We had been walking for a few hours without a glimpse of gibbons, long enough that I had already started to wonder if I would have to wait another day, or longer, to finally see the animals I proposed to study for the coming year. My anxiety was temporarily eased as we crossed over a small ravine, and Warren pointed up into the crown of an unimaginably large tree. It was a sprawling Ficus that soared over a hundred feet in the air, and high overhead was a family of gibbons moving through the distant branches. Certainly it was a climactic moment, but even though I felt a burst of exhilaration, it was quickly followed by a sense of alarm. I was shocked by how hard it was to see the animals, which compared to their surroundings looked more like squirrels than apes, and I began to wonder how I was ever going to follow them for a full day, let alone simultaneously collect behavioral data. An even bigger surprise, as I later wrote in my diary, was how difficult it was to see the fruit the gibbons had apparently come to the tree to eat. I suppose I had expected fruit the size of supermarket produce dangling from every branch. Instead I could barely distinguish the nickel and dime-sized fruit from the branches themselves. This predicament was no small matter because the topic I had come to Khao Yai to study was the feeding behavior of these highly frugivorous primates.