OTHER APES 



261 



variety, and more active than any other of the group. 

 His habitat is in the south-east of Asia; its outline 

 is vaguely defined, but it includes the Malayan 

 Peninsula and many of the contiguous islands east 

 and south of it. 



The skeleton of the gibbon is the most delicate 

 and graceful in build of all the apes, and in this re- 

 spect is as far superior to man as man is to the gorilla, 

 except for the long arms and digits. He is the only 

 one of the four that can walk in an erect position, 

 but in doing this the gibbon is awkward, and often 

 uses his arms to balance himself, sometimes by 

 touching his hands to the ground, or at other times 

 raising them above his head or extending them on 

 either side. The length of them is such that he can 

 touch the fingers to the ground while the body is^ 

 nearly if not quite erect. In the spinal column he 

 has two and sometimes three sections more than 

 man. His digits are very much longer, but his legs, 

 are nearly the same length in proportion to his body 

 as those of man. He has fourteen pairs of ribs. 



The gibbon is the most active, if not the most 

 intelligent, of all apes. He is more arboreal in habit 

 than any other. Many wonderful stories are told of 

 his agility in climbing and leaping from limb to limb. 

 One authentic report credits one of these apes with 

 leaping a distance of forty-two feet from the limb of 

 one tree to that of another. Perhaps a better term 

 is to call it swinging rather than leaping, as these 

 flights are performed by the arms. Another account 

 is, that one swinging by one hand propelled himself 



