Palu-Palu and Sammy: The Surprise Gibbon Connection!

By: Shirley McGreal, IPPL Chairwoman
May 2005

IPPL received a fascinating holiday gift from a member living in the Hawaiian Islands. It was a tattered book with the title All God's Creatures - The Autobiography of Sam Pryor. The book was published privately by Vantage Press in 1982. The book provided IPPL with valuable information about two of IPPL's gibbons, Sammy and Palu-Palu.

Sam Pryor was Executive Vice-President of the now-defunct Pan Amercan Airways and was also an official of Remington Arms. He lived at Kipahalu on the island of Maui.

For several years in the 1980s, we had heard rumors of a man living on Maui who had a collection of pet gibbons, and that he had found a way to get gibbons out of Asia.

One day in the early 1980s I received a call from a man identifying himself as Mr. Pryor. My caller asked if IPPL would provide a home for his gibbons when he died. I said, "Yes, but please put it in writing," and added that we would not need any funds for the gibbons' care.

We heard nothing further about Mr. Pryor or his gibbons for many years. Then one day in 1994 Lucy Wormser of the Pacific Primate Sanctuary on the island of Maui called me to report about a gibbon kept alone at Maui Zoo in substandard conditions. The gibbon's name was Sammy.

Lucy and her colleagues campaigned for Sammy to come to IPPL, and he arrived in South Carolina in May 1995. We learned that Sammy had been kept as a pet by Sam Pryor. He had regularly been taken to the Hana Hotel's lunch buffet where he had a special fruit plate. However, Pryor had unfortunately never put in writing that his gibbons were to come to IPPL when he died - and thus poor Sammy ended up living in isolation at Maui Zoo.

I never knew a gentler, sweeter gibbon than Sammy, but he clearly was not a healthy animal. From the start, Sammy had a bad cough. Tests showed that he had dilated cardiomyopathy, a serious condition not heard of before in gibbons, but which can be caused by exposure to the Coxsackie virus. Sammy was very cooperative and let us medicate him, but his heart muscle was damaged beyond repair and there was no cure. Poor Sammy passed on in October 1997. If only Mr. Pryor had put in writing that Sammy should come to IPPL, this lovely gibbon would probably never have been esposed to the virus that took his life-and would probably still be alive.

Later, Maui Zoo got into trouble with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a decision was made to close the zoo down. The zoo's remaining gibbons were sent to IPPL; they were Boy, Jade, and their young son Maui. We immediately changed the name "Boy" to "Palu-Palu," which means "softly-softly" in the Hawaiian language.

We are always curious about the background of our gibbons and found an answer in Pryor's book. "Boy" had also been a pet in Sam Pryor's home. He and his mate Kamie had produced a black baby gibbon who was taken away for hand-raising. "Boy" was our Sammy's father!

In his new "incarnation" as Palu-Palu, Sammy's father has lived at IPPL since 2000. His mate Jade still lives here with him. Maui formerly lived with Michelle and is the father of our youngster Courtney, making Palu-Palu and Jade grandparents.

Pryor is buried along with six of his pet gibbons in the churchyard at Hana, alongside the grave of Pryor's great friend, the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Palu-Palu today

Sammy at home at IPPL

Please help care for Palu-Palu and his 30 gibbon companions by making a donation by check or credit card to the IPPL Gibbon Fund, P.O. Box 766, Summerville, SC 29484.