The species was split from the eastern hoolock gibbon after a team led by Chinese and British researchers compared skull measurements, pelage details and genetic data across hoolock populations. Skywalker gibbons have sparser white brows that do not merge into a single band, and males have a distinct dark beard.
The name is not only a joke. Tianxing renders a phrase associated with heaven's movement, which suits an animal that spends nearly all its life in the canopy, and the classical allusion was deliberate. Naming a species after popular culture is uncommon but not unprecedented in primatology.
The conservation situation is severe. The Chinese population is estimated in the low hundreds at most, scattered in fragmented montane forest, and the Myanmar portion of the range is poorly surveyed. As with several recent primate splits, recognition arrived alongside evidence that the newly named form is already at serious risk.