The five siamangs seemed to be having a wonderful time. They swung and ran through the tree, picking fruit, sometimes eating it and sometimes tossing it away. They concentrated their actions in the area where the mother orang sat with her baby. After only a few minutes, the harassed orangutan, too disturbed to eat, gave up and moved off with her baby. The first battle won, the siamangs turned their attention to the big male orang. The red ape was a magnificent animal, five times Toba’s weight, with powerful arms and an imposing facial expression. Nevertheless, the gibbons showed him no respect. Without hesitation, the siamang family began to torment the orangutan. They danced all around him, causing a terrible commotion. They shook branches and shrieked. Finally, Toba plucked a fig and tossed it at the orang, hitting him in the side of the head. The red ape was not hurt by the fruit, but he had had enough. Slowly and deliberately, he brachiated away.
			The siamangs now had the fig tree all to themselves, and they settled down to feed. They were picky eaters, selecting only the best fruits, then taking apart the figs with great delicacy and discarding seeds and bad spots. They could afford to be choosy because the jungle always held far more food than they needed. If their favorite figs were too ripe for their taste, the siamangs could eat grapes or plums or mangoes. They liked leaf shoots and stems and flower buds, too. And there were always fat caterpillars, ants, and termites available for occasional snacks. The siamangs fed together for two hours. Once, Singkil scampered over to a nearby tree, where three large branches came together to form a natural bowl. The bowl was always filled with rain water--a canopy-level waterhole handy for animals who rarely descended to the ground. Singkil drank in typical gibbon fashion. She dipped a hand into the water, then licked the water off the fur on the back of her knuckles. She repeated this action several times, until her thirst was quenched. During the morning feeding session, peace reigned in the siamang family. Singkil was permitted to eat with the others. Later, though, after the gibbons had traveled to a favorite midday resting place, her parents’ hostility surfaced again. The two youngest siamangs were playing, chasing each other through the trees in a circular path. Singkil tried to join in by jumping out from behind a clump of leaves to surprise her brother. Tarag rushed at her, forcing her to retreat. Singkil then approached her father, asking to be groomed. Toba bared his teeth at her, then moved away, finally sitting down to be groomed by Tarag. Singkil shook her arms in frustration, then settled back morosely to groom herself. Although she was obviously upset, she was a fastidious groomer, removing all traces of the sticky figs from her lovely fur. After the midday “siesta,” the siamang family began to travel again. During the afternoon, they moved through the trees of their small territory, stopping here and there to feed. The animals stayed close together; even Singkil remained in sight of her parents. They saw no other siamang families, because each group stuck to its own territory. As the day went on, the siamangs spent more and more time grooming each other, and less time feeding. In late afternoon, the siamangs’ travel suddenly seemed purposeful again. As usual, they moved in single file with Tarag leading. Within ten minutes they were back in the area of Rami’s camp and had decided on a sleeping tree for the night. They had several favorite trees--they usually didn’t choose the same tree two nights in a row, but they usually chose a place they had slept before. An hour of settling down and grooming followed. By the time Rami returned to his camp, the siamangs were asleep; Tarag with the baby, Toba with the young male, and Singkil alone. As darkness fell, the black forms of the sleeping gibbons melted into the canopy leaves. Once again the jungle belonged to the creatures of the night.