‘The Singing Apes of Khao Yai’ has a special place in our history. It’s not a Big Wave production, and was made by our MD, Sarah Cunliffe for Partridge Films. It won Sarah her first Panda Wildscreen award and really was the start of Sarah’s career working in television. We’ve included a clip for purely nostalgic reasons!

Program Summary

Dawn… and a strange call echoes in the land of the big hills. The song of the Lar Gibbon.

Filmed high in the treetops, THE SINGING APES OF KHAO YAI is the story of a family of gibbons and a very special lifestyle that revolves around song.

Featuring an adult male and female, a one year old baby and an eight year old son who is close to leaving home- we discover how song rules their lives. Not only does it define the area in which the family live; it also maintains the lifelong ‘marriage’ of the parents and for the adolescent son, it is his passport to adulthood. How good his singing is will reflect his success in finding a partner and establishing new land of his own. But gibbons also face another threat to their success as young adults. Poaching for the animal trade.