Gibbon Monkey Meets a Turtle for the First Time and Is the Picture of Confusion
Located in Goddard, Kansas, the Tanganyika Zoo is home to a wide variety of animals including giraffes, lemurs, rhinos, monkeys, and more. They shared a video on Sunday, June 2nd of one of their Gibbon monkeys meeting a turtle for the first time, and there was confusion all around!
The video starts with the Gibbon eyeing the turtle, who is sitting at the water's edge. The Gibbon is already trying to figure out what the thing is...is it a rock? It gets closer to get a better look and decides to touch it. The turtle starts moving and the monkey jumps back, clearly frightened by it and backing away quickly. He tries to pick it up a couple of times and drops the turtle. That's when the turtle decides its had enough, and swims away from the curious monkey.
The poor monkey was so confused! It couldn't figure out what that thing was and wasn't sure what to do with it! We can't even see the turtle's face, but I'm guessing that if we could, it would look very annoyed! Tanganyika always shares great videos of interactions between animals and humans as well as animals doing funny things, and I always enjoy seeing them.
Related: Turtle's Cute Obsession With One of His Caretakers Is Touching People's Hearts
Facts About Gibbon Monkeys
I've been writing about pets and animals for more than a year now, and I was surprised to realize that I have never written about Gibbon monkeys before...I thought I'd covered them all! I decided to do some quick research to learn some fun facts about these monkeys.
Gibbons can be found in the rain forests of southeastern Asia and spend most of their time in trees, much like sloths. They even sleep in the trees, nesting in between branches. They have long arms and can swing quickly from branch to branch: in fact, One Kind Planet calls gibbons the gymnasts of the primate kingdom, "Their dramatic form of locomotion, called brachiating, can move gibbons through the jungle at up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour, bridging gaps as wide as 50 feet (15 metres) with a single swinging leap."
Gibbons are tailless, which leaves balancing a little tricky on the rare occasions that they do walk. When on ground, they stand and walk on their two hind legs and throw their arms up over their head for balance. One Kind Planet shared this cool fact, "They are the most bipedal of all non-human primates and are often studied for clues to what evolutionary pressures may have led to human walking."
I also enjoyed this sweet fact about Gibbons, "Gibbons are one of only a few species of primates that mate for life. Mated pairs, and even whole families, will sing long, complex songs together. Some species have even adapted large throat pouches to amplify their calls." Now I need to Google the songs to see what the singing Gibbons sound like!
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