Helen & Peppy

When the rescued lab gibbon, Arun Rangsi, settled at IPPL, we knew it would not be long before he needed a female companion, as gibbons live in monogamous pairs. In April 1982, a New York laboratory offered us a two year old girl gibbon called Helen. Helen was intended to be Arun Rangsi's mate.

John drove to New York to collect her. He found Helen sitting dejectedly in a cage. In the next cage an unhappy-looking boy gibbon named Peppy sat sucking his thumb. Clearly, these gibbons were friends and cagemates and had just been separated. After a series of phone-calls, Shirley succeeded in persuading laboratory officials to send BOTH gibbons to IPPL. Helen and Peppy had both reached the New York lab from the gibbon cancer lab in California that had closed down when it lost its funding. Medical records showed that Peppy had been infected with a cancer-causing virus when just three months old, but he never developed viremia or antibodies. Peppy sucked his thumb when he arrived and still does!
 

Peppy sucks his thumb

Helen and Peppy are inseparable and totally devoted to each other. Peppy is now 20 but still sucks his thumb. His only health problem was when he once sucked his thumb raw. There is no way to keep a bandage on a gibbon, and the vet said we just had to hope his thumb would heal on its own. Fortunately it did!

 

More photos.

Peppy and Helen: 25 Years with IPPL.