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Dear Straight Dope:
Who or what type of critter was Tarzan raised by? I recall from the books that he disliked gorillas and from the descriptions, chimps are too small. Did old Edgar just make up a whole class of apes?
First answer: yes, it's fiction, and Edgar Rice Burroughs made up the whole thing. He wasn't a naturalist, zoologist or anthropologist, and his jungle animals behaved as he wanted them to, to tell a good story. Reality definitely took a second place. Hell, about a 102nd place. Burroughs did distinguish his great apes from gorillas, but did not identify them further than that.
Now, second answer: The identification of the tribe of apes who raised Tarzan is a matter of serious debate (yes, serious debate) among Tarzan aficionados, much as discussions of the location of Watson's wound are among Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. The game is the same: Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote accounts of a real person, Tarzan, just as John Watson wrote accounts about a real detective, Sherlock Holmes. The problem is that Burroughs (like Watson, or like his editor Arthur Conan Doyle) tried to conceal the true identities of many of the people and incidents; hence, the accounts are full of distortions and seeming inconsistencies. True aficionados try to pry behind the camouflage, to determine the true events, dates, people, places, etc., and to reconcile the inconsistencies.
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