Natural curiosity

In January of 2017, Fan Pengfei from School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University in China, who is also cofounder of Cloud Mountain Conservation, and other scientists announced the discovery of a new species of primate, the skywalker hoolock gibbon, or hoolock tianxing in the American Journal of Primatology.

According to Fan, they chose this English name partly because the Chinese characters of its scientific name, tianxing, means "heaven's movement", and also the scientists are fans of Star Wars.

American actor Mark Hamill, the original Luke Skywalker in the film franchise took note of the name -he said on twitter that he was so proud to have a new jungle Jedi named after his character.

Fan and scientists think that this new species should be categorized as endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria.

"There are around 1,800 wild pandas in China－which is more than the total number of all six species of gibbons in China. There are fewer than 1,500 gibbons and only around 150 are skywalker hoolock gibbons," Yan says. "The public barely know this fact."

According to Yan, most gibbons in China live in protection areas, but the reason they fear for the future of the skywalker hoolock gibbon is that half of them live outside protection areas.

There are only two zoos in China, one in Beijing and the other one in Kunming, Yunnan province, that have skywalker hoolock gibbons.