This is a working family-tree archive of Northern White-cheeked Gibbons (Nomascus leucogenys) in Australasian zoos. The species is critically endangered in the wild, and the regional captive population traces back through just a handful of wild-caught founders from Vietnam, plus a few imports from European and US zoos.

The structural data (pedigree, dates, transfers) comes from the 2009 Australasian regional studbook compiled by Clare Campbell at Perth Zoo. The story layer comes from the long-running ZooChat thread by steveroberts and contributors, plus Belinda Burns' 2015 PhD thesis on Australasian gibbon pairs and families, plus Perth Zoo's own articles, Wellington Zoo's social posts, and a sweep of Wikimedia Commons.

Built by Jimmy and Ben as a personal-but-public passion project. Reach out at james@thisisgravity.co if you keep, work with, or have ever worked with these animals; or have unpublished photos in a drawer somewhere.

Caveats

Several names are spelled slightly differently across sources (Jermei or Jermeine, Viann or Vianne, Li-Lian or Lily). Where possible we use the studbook spelling and note the alternative. Many infants died before being named. We keep them in the dataset for completeness rather than hiding them, but the Individuals page filters them out by default.

Open questions

Specific gaps we have not yet been able to close. If you can help with any of these we would love to hear from you.

• Any photograph of Racquel, Tieu, or Vang. All three were wild-caught founders, all photographed pre-internet. Perth Zoo and Melbourne Zoo archives are the most likely homes.
• Photographs of Eeyore at Wellington Zoo (1991 to 1998). Wellington Zoo, Te Papa Tongarewa, or NZ press archives.
• Tao's exact birth date and origin zoo. Burns 2015 has him at 8.1 years old in mid-2010 (suggesting 2002 birth, somewhere in France). Confirmation from Parc Zoologique de Champrépus or similar would close this.
• Identity of the unnamed Adelaide Zoo individuals photographed by Peripitus and Bilby on Wikimedia in 2008 and 2009. They post-date Remus's death (Aug 2006) so they are a successor pair we have not yet tracked.
• Identity of the unnamed Melbourne Zoo individuals photographed in 2014 and 2015, before Li-Lian and Jin Huan arrived from Perth in May 2017.
• Any photograph of Pinocchio from his Hannover years (1993 to 1998), Perth quarantine (1998), or Mogo (1999 to 2003).
• Anyone who worked with Belinda Burns during her 2008 to 2012 fieldwork: were field photographs of Tao + Jermei + Li-Lian taken that have not been published?
• Confirmed updates from any zoo since the 2009 studbook closed: new births, deaths, transfers, name changes.