The Change of Historical Distribution of Chinese Gibbons (Hylobates)

There are many records about gibbons (Hylobates) named "alternatively armed" apes in the Chinese ancient literature.The arms are greatly elongated with the forearm and hand being the most elongated.Hylobates means "dweller in the trees",and the name is fully justified for these animals.the call of the gibbon is most typical.Every morning the troops of gibbons filled the forests and valleys with their songs.They are howler monkeys of the old world.We have made a review of all the previous records of the gibbons since the fourth century,and we have discovered that the Chinese gibbons had been distributed in famous three gorges (Wu gorge etc.) of the Yangtze and northwestern parts of Hunan province and then retreated to the Yunkai mountains and Shiwan mountains of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.At the present,they are confined in distribution to Hainan Island and southern Yunnan province.Thus we may see that there exists quite a difference between their distribution of the present time and that in former times.