Indonesia's 2008 Guiness Book of World Records title of "highest deforestation" is a major contributing factor to the rapidly dwindling number of the gibbon species. It also doesn't help that poachers illegally capture and sell baby gibbons on the black market as pets. These factors have led the World Wildlife Fund to name the gibbon as the most endagered ape species.

As forests in Indonesia are rapidly destroyed -approximately 300 soccer fields of forest each hour - the gibbons' habitat, including figs they rely on as a food source, is disappearing too. The estimated number of surviving species members is 4,000, with 150 currently making their home in East Java, located in Indonesia.

The poaching issue presents a significant problem, even if the creatures are rescued. Though Conservation International has a project that attempts to reintroduce caputred gibbons into their natural habitat, certain challenges make these efforts difficult, if not impossible. Females can only survive with a mate, due to the family groups gibbons live in. Despite this, the females often reject the males primatologists attempt to pair them with. Primatologists also face the challenge of attempting to teach proper diet habits to gibbons who have been kepts as pets.

Dr. Jatna Supriatna, a primatologist, says the most unfortunate fact regarding the threat to the species, is that it is entirely preventable.

"They don't have any too big a natural enemy, but encroachment," Supriatna explains.

» CNN Asia