Rare video: young orangutan and gibbon play together in the Borneo jungle

In the wild, gibbons and orangutans usually compete with one another for food and habitat, so they tend to either stay out of one another’s way or, on occasion, fight. However, researchers recently captured rare footage of a young orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and a gibbon (Hylobates sp.) playing together in Sabangau Forest, a peat-swamp forest in Indonesian Borneo.

The video was captured as part of a long-term research and conservation project run by the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project (OuTrop). In it, Chilli the gibbon and Fio the orangutan wrestle, tickle, and chase each other in the rainforest canopy.

“I was not surprised to see them playing together, rather I was delighted as this is very rare,” Susan Cheyne, OuTrop’s director of gibbon research, told Mongabay in an email.

“Fio and Chilli are both about 5 years old but we can see in the video how differently they move and play together,” Cheyne said. She added that this type of play is “crucial” for young animals’ development as it helps them learn social skills and develops their muscles.

Tom Lloyd, a master’s student from Oxford Brookes University in England, was the one behind the camera taking the video and photos. “What started off as a typical day in the forest, turned into something special when an Indonesian field researcher and I came across the pair play-fighting,” Lloyd said in a press release. “We stood there in awe; amazed by these two individuals from different species just doing what youngsters do…having fun!”

The video offers “an amazing insight into how these young apes play and how different their development is,” Cheyne said, adding “This created an excellent opportunity to start a project on gibbons where we would be able to compare between the two species as well as contribute to their conservation.”