Apes are descended from divas: biologists find rare pack of singing gibbons

Apes are descended from divas: biologists find rare pack of singing gibbons

main

norman lebrecht

July 18, 2011

You couldn’t make it up.

Der Spiegel has a story of a rare colony of monkeys, Nomascus leucogenys, living near the Vietnam border with Laos, and singing quite accurately to one another, sometimes in duets.

They are threatened with extinction. Conservationists are studying them to death. Followed, no doubt, by musicologists who would not recognise a mortal specimen if it was alive. The monkeys are reported to have doubled their fees and are looking to vultures for representation.

Whatever. Here‘s the story, in German.

Gibbons: Singing Apes ecstasize Environmentalists

 photo: (c) Terry Whittaker. all rights reserved

Comments

  • I’m quite sure I heard one of them singing Lucia earlier this year…

  • Jim Archer says:

    These are not monkeys. They are apes.

  • MOST READ TODAY: