Great Ape Language in Fiction
Fantasy writer Edgar Rice Burroughs invented a fictitious great ape language called Mangani in his Tarzan books. This imagined language included such words as Kreegah! ("Beware!") and Tarmangani ("Great White Ape"). These words and others are sometimes used by cartoonists, and for facetious slang. (See Kreegah bundolo).
Writer Michael Crichton used the concept of great ape language in his 1980 novel Congo, in which a fictional gorilla named Amy communicates extensively with her keeper using signs. This is also shown in the movie Congo.
The X-Files has an episode titled Fearful Symmetry in which a gorilla named Sophie communicates extensively with humans via signs.
The 1987 film Project X, starring Matthew Broderick, had a chimpanzee, named Virgil, use of signs as an important part of the plot.
In the 2011 film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, two apes used signs to communicate with humans and with each other. Although the apes' brains have been enhanced in the film, there is an orangutan named Maurice shown to use signs prior to any enhancement.
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Famous quotes containing the words ape, language and/or fiction:
“Said an ape as he swung by his tail
To his offspring both female and male,
“From your children, my dears,
In a couple of years
May evolve a professor at Yale.””
—Anonymous.
“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is
taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety;”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)