Well, what in tarnation…
As the closest living relative to humans, apes and monkeys will always grab my interest.
Pretty much all species show incredible intelligence and social dynamics, plus, there’s just something so interesting about watching them walk around and swing from trees in the jungle.
Of course, given their smarts and physical abilities, they don’t tend to make the best pets, as this Oklahoma woman found out, but sometimes observing monkeys in a human made habitat is a great way to understand them.
In this video, we see a gibbons ape reacting to seeing a hedgehog for the first time.
Gibbons are part of the lesser ape family, meaning they have low sexual dimorphism, don’t build nests, and are smaller than the great apes (chimps, gorillas, orangutans, etc.).
Typically, they weigh around 11 pounds and have a body length of 20 inches and are the fastest of all tree dwelling, nonflying mammals.
The particular gibbons we see here is all-white, which does happen in nature but is quite rare. For some reason, he was drawn to the fence line of its enclosure and laid eyes on one of the cutest of all creatures for the first time ever.
Hedgehogs are native to parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand. This video takes place in the UK, so it’s possible this hedgehog calls the area home and this was an organic encounter.
It’s hard to explain exactly how the ape reacts other than saying he was clearly bamboozled. Jumping around, standing up, moving to the side for a better view, the poor monkey had no clue what he was looking at and didn’t know if it should be scared or not.
At one point, it decided it had enough and raced away, grabbed onto a log structure, and swing on top of it to contemplate everything it thought it knew about life.
Another gibbon in the area then decides to take a look and doesn’t find the hedgehog nearly as scary or interesting as its friend, which gives the white gibbons courage to come back for another glimpse. But again, it gets spooked and runs up the structure to safety.
The video ends with a worker removing the hedgehog from the area.
Man, I can watch gibbons all day. They just seem so innocent and fun to be around.
