Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world

Video: Jumping gibbon

Olympics of the apes (Image: Andy Caulfield/Getty)

Species: Hylobates lar

Habitat: tropical forests of south-east Asia and Indonesia, making Olympic long jumpers feel distinctly inadequate

It’s only a year until the London Olympics, but maybe there’s still time to introduce a new event. Many Londoners are putting in some intensive training in Synchronised Looting and Throwing Things at People, but none of this is particularly impressive on an athletic level.


If they want a real challenge they should try the Gibbon Leap. These apes can leap over 10 metres from tree to tree. But the strange thing is that they do it without any of the specialised adaptations that other leaping animals have evolved.

Gambolling gibbons

White-handed gibbons live in tropical forests, spending almost all their time in the trees. They are one of the few animals that brachiate: they swing themselves along the undersides of branches using only their arms. That’s until they reach the edge of the tree they’re in, at which point they jump across to the next.

Animals that do a lot of leaping tend to have all sorts of subtle adjustments to their bodies that make them better at it. For instance, leaping animals such as frogs have unusually long hind legs, which means the force of the jump is transmitted over a greater distance.

Gibbons have none of that, yet they have been seen jumping over 10 metres horizontally. What’s more, they generally jump slightly further than they need to, presumably to be sure they don’t fall. Anthony Channon of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, and colleagues decided to find out what their secret is.

Ape leap set

Last year Channon found that they jump in four distinct ways, depending on the situation. For short distances, they would walk along a branch and then jump from one foot, like an extended step. Sometimes they brought both feet together before the jump.

They also performed squat leaps: they sat with both legs bent at the knees, then extended them while also raising their arms, hurling themselves through the air and landing on their feet. Jumping this way costs a lot of energy, but sitting still may give them a chance to take a close look at the tree they’re jumping to, ensuring it is safe.

And for the biggest jumps, they started with one leg in front of the other and pushed themselves off with the rear one. This time they caught the destination branch with their hands, and often went straight into a bout of brachiation.

Caught on camera

Channon has now taken high-definition videos of captive gibbons leaping, and analysed them in detail. The gibbons covered distances up to 5.2 metres, and took off at speeds up to 8.3 metres per second.

To achieve that speed, they had to use 34.5 joules of energy for every kilogram of body mass. He says that is a record for a single movement by any animal. Humans, by comparison, manage just 6.3 joules per kilogram. Clearly, the gibbons can marshal a lot of energy.

The trick, according to Channon, is the way the apes swing their upper bodies and arms. This means the force of the leap is being transmitted along much of the length of their bodies, amplifying its effect.

This is rather similar to a trick used by ancient Greek athletes when performing the long jump. They would carry heavy weights called halteres in each hand, each one weighing up to 9 kilograms. Before jumping they swung them back and forth, then forwards as they took off and backwards as they landed.

It sounds counter-intuitive, because adding extra weight ought to shorten the jump. But in fact the halteres moved the athlete’s centre of mass forwards and up at take-off, allowing them to jump further. A 2002 study showed that doing this would have extended a 3-metre jump by 17 centimetres at least.

Given apes’ talent for tool use, it probably won’t be long before gibbons start clutching rocks.

Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0574

Read previous Zoologger columns: The monkey that really gets brotherly love, Bullied boobies develop brain of a bully, How deaf-mute frogs talk to each other, No brain, but at least it’s got personality, Pink magnet slug doesn’t need ruby slippers, The first non-human meat farmers, Biofuel powers biggest flying marsupial, Tough guys wear turquoise, Patriarchal fish punish powerful females, Clone army steals genes from other species, The snail that’s bust a gut to become toxic, The only fish that cries like a baby.