Yellow-cheeked gibbon

Yellow-cheeked gibbon
(left: male right: female)
Conservation status
Endangered (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Superfamily:	Hominoidea
Family:	Hylobatidae
Genus:	Nomascus
Species:	N. gabriellae
Binomial name
Nomascus gabriellae (Thomas, 1909)
Yellow-cheeked Gibbon range

The yellow-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus gabriellae), also called the yellow-cheeked crested gibbon, the golden-cheeked crested gibbon or the buffed-cheeked gibbon, is a species of gibbon native to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The yellow-cheeked gibbon is born blond and later turns black, and males carry this colouring through their lifespan and have the distinguishing golden cheeks; females are born blonde to blend into their mother's fur but they later turn black and turn back to blond at sexual maturity and only have a black cap on the top of their heads.^{[citation needed]}

This diurnal and arboreal gibbon lives in primary tropical rainforest, foraging for fruits, using brachiation to move through the trees.

The yellow-cheeked gibbon, like all gibbon species, has a unique song which is usually initiated by the male.^{[citation needed]} The female will then join in and sing with the male to reinforce their bond and announce to other gibbons that they are a pair in a specific territory.^{[citation needed]} The male usually finishes the song after the female has stopped singing.^{[citation needed]}

Little is known about this species in the wild, but it is thought that it has a life span of approximately 46 years.^{[citation needed]}

A recent report by the Wildlife Conservation Society counted 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in Cambodia’s Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, an estimate that represents the largest known population of the species in the world.