What species were Tarzan's apes?

D

Dinosaur

Rational Skeptic
Valued Senior Member
When I read the original Edgar Rice burroughs novel, I had a notion about the apes that adopted the infant Tarzan. I do not think there is such a species.

My concpet of those apes was that they were about the size of a man or perhaps slightly larger. They seemed to be anatomically similar to a man, expect for longer arms. They did not seem to be like gorillas. baboons, or chimpanzees.

Tarzan fought with at least one of them when he was an adult. There is not way a man could cope with a gorilla.

Is there a species like the one that I imagined? Perhaps Burroughs made up a non existent species for the purposes of a novel, which is no sin since it was supposed to be fiction.

Has anyone read the original novel and formed an impression of what these apes were?

Does anyone here have an idea as to the species? In the movies, Tarzan was no longer with the ape family and had a pet chimpanzee. In the Greystroke movie, his mother was portrayed as a gorilla.
 
The apes who raised Tarzan were the Mangani, their own name for themselves in their ape language. The Mangani Tarzan killed was Kerchak.
 
There is not way a man could cope with a gorilla....

...or any ape for that matter. The book was not scientifically accurate by today's standards.
 
spidergoat said:
There is not way a man could cope with a gorilla....

...or any ape for that matter. The book was not scientifically accurate by today's standards.
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well, the other gorilla was stronger but tarsan had a knife, thats how he also killed aligator and python if I remember correctly.
 
At last he saw it, the thing the little monkeys so feared--
the man-brute of which the Claytons had caught occasional
fleeting glimpses.

It was approaching through the jungle in a semi-erect position,
now and then placing the backs of its closed fists upon the
ground--a great anthropoid ape, and, as it advanced, it emitted
deep guttural growls and an occasional low barking sound.
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cross between a gorilla and a dog.

The ape was a great bull, weighing probably three hundred
pounds.
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wikipedia said:
Gorillas move around by knuckle-walking. Adult males range in height from 165-175 cm (5 ft 5 in – 5 ft 9 in), and in weight from 140–200 kg (310–440 lb).
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weight of a Gorilla.

Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundred
and fifty pounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding,
his eyes bloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flat
nose; his ears large and thin, but smaller than most of his kind.
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gorilla weight again.

The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an
iron hand and bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families,
each family consisting of an adult male with his females and
their young, numbering in all some sixty or seventy apes.
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behaviour not seen in Gorillas
 
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He had taken scarce a dozen steps toward the jungle when
a great form rose up before him from the shadows of a low
bush. At first he thought it was one of his own people but in
another instant he realized that it was Bolgani, the huge gorilla.

So close was he that there was no chance for flight and
little Tarzan knew that he must stand and fight for his life;
for these great beasts were the deadly enemies of his tribe, and
neither one nor the other ever asked or gave quarter.
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A new species.

Gorillas are their enemies.
 
It's only a story, not meant to be true or realistic any more than his Mars or Pelucidar stories were meant to be.
 
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In the movies Tarzan's oddly named pal Cheeta was a chimpanzee. I haven't seen any of them since I was little so I don't remember any scenes with the Mangani. I'm sure they were just human actors in gorilla suits.

Gorillas are not easy to domesticate. Koko is a rare exception surely made possible by teaching her ASL and she's still not an ape you would expect to perform tricks. Young chimpanzees are relatively easy, but when they reach adulthood they become less tractable or downright hostile.

It's not unbelievable that a gorilla clan would take in a human child. After all Jane Goodall managed to be accepted as a member of the clan she was studying. We're more closely related to chimpanzees and despite their smaller stature they're more than strong enough to manage a human child. However, chimps are rather nasty critters who commit such humanlike acts as murder. Bonobos are more gentle and tolerant (they spend a lot of time engaging in sex as a social bonding activity) and would be a better choice for a story; up until a few decades ago no one realized that bonobos and true chimpanzees are two different species.

The description of the Mangani social order is indeed not accurate for gorillas. They live in a single family unit ruled by a patriarch. All male offspring leave when they become sexually mature. And they are not especially violent among themselves. Jane Goodall once accidentally slapped the female sitting next to her on the butt and she just moved away.

The "missing link" is a common theme in post-Darwinian literature. We observe ourselves as being so greatly differentiated from the other hominoids or "Great Apes" (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and the two species of gorilla) that we imagine there must be a transitional species hiding somewhere in the bush. In fact our DNA is so close to chimpanzee DNA that the lack of transitional species other than the fossils we've already discovered is not remarkable.

BTW, Dino, baboons are monkeys, not apes. They have tails. Besides the hominoids, the other branch of the ape subclass (superfamily?) of primates is the gibbons, of which there are a number of species.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
It's not unbelievable that a gorilla clan would take in a human child. After all Jane Goodall managed to be accepted as a member of the clan she was studying.
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Accepted as a member, eh? That might have been a little touch-and-go in some situations. She might have been required to accept other members, for instance.
 
GeoffP said:
Accepted as a member, eh? That might have been a little touch-and-go in some situations. She might have been required to accept other members, for instance.
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The human female's ability to physically perform copulation outside of her estrus cycle is very rare among mammals. Chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest relatives) have it, as do dolphins. Gorillas don't. As a result, gorillas are like most mammals: the females dictate the terms of copulation.

If Tarzan had really killed the leader of a pack of gorillas and taken over as patriarch, he might have had some serious problems.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The human female's ability to physically perform copulation outside of her estrus cycle is very rare among mammals. Chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest relatives) have it, as do dolphins. Gorillas don't. As a result, gorillas are like most mammals: the females dictate the terms of copulation.
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Yes, I've been reading a book about that...what the hell is the title...about the female control of reproduction via iron-nutritive fitness. Still, I always assumed that gorilla males were a little more insistent even though females control the act. There is, after all, no Jaegermeister in the gorilla world.

If Tarzan had really killed the leader of a pack of gorillas and taken over as patriarch, he might have had some serious problems.
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I can see that being a sensitive business.
 
GeoffP said:
Still, I always assumed that gorilla males were a little more insistent even though females control the act.
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No, I looked it up. The females solicit sex and they can be mighty insistent about it. Remember, you've got a single adult male in a pack with a dozen or more adult females.
 
Really? So, surviving the bull gorilla, whatever's left of Tarzan would have to endure the female assault. Couldn't even die happy, I'd think.
 
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