The Great Apes - Iconic Animal #4
Understanding humanity through our connection to the Animal Kingdom
The Great Apes - Iconic Animal #4
K.L. Orion
Recently, I had the pleasure of dragging at least six friends over the course of three nights to see Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Yes, I went to see it three times. It was certainly no work of high art, nor was it the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. But it had to be one of the most fun and imaginative movies I’ve seen in years. If you look at the box office records, the movie is doing wonderfully, and much of that can be owed to my exploits in going to rewatch it with friends over and over. It got so bad that my local theater actually gave me one of the promotional theater posters for the film as a gift for attending so many times.
But even if you take out the nine tickets sold over the course of my Godzillalothon, the film would still be breaking this year’s box office records (albeit, the year is still young and these records will likely be shattered yet again). There is something that fascinates us with the concept of giant animals. I mean, just look at my last two posts about elephants and whales. But being big isn’t the only intriguing part of Godzilla and King Kong.
Godzilla is a giant reptile; an idea that has intrigued and terrified us for generations. There is something extremely alien and bizarre about reptiles, especially giant ones. Huge snakes, turtles, and crocodiles have long caught our imagination. Even greater was the boom of Dinomania when colossal dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles were discovered. Centuries before prehistoric reptiles were recognized, stories of dragons and sea serpents expressed these sentiments in humanity (as a matter of fact, it was a comment about a mythological turtle that sent me down this journey). These enormous reptiles have long represented wonder, fear, and brutality; all traits that are expressed greatly by the powerful Godzilla.
However, when we turn to Kong, we find a more sympathetic character. He’s something of a cross between a brute and a kind heart. He has a strange duality, which might be due to the animal chosen as his basis. An animal that is strange and almost alien but in a completely different sense from why reptiles are. These animals seem alien in how uncannily similar they are to us humans.
Perhaps to further illustrate my point, Godzilla x Kong has pretty obvious similarities with another famous movie series; a movie series with an installment coming out in the next few months. As a matter of fact, we saw a trailer for this movie when we went to see Godzilla x Kong.
Planet of the Apes.
The concept of Planet of the Apes is pretty straightforward yet infinitely complex and thought provoking. A world where the dominant species are apes and humans are feral pests. While the films themselves present many ideas and issues that can have deep dives dedicated to them, the simple concept of a world ruled by apes is extremely fascinating. It’s fascinating we would even come up with an idea such as that. Between characters like King Kong and movies like Planet of the Apes, it is clear that our simian relatives have a profound impact on our pop culture. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Primates are clearly iconic, and it’s probably not a surprise why. They are our relatives. We ourselves are a kind of primate. So with that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that our closest relatives, the great apes, are probably some of the most iconic animals ever to exist. It’s easy to see how they are iconic, but it’s more intriguing to try to understand the full reasons why.
The existence of apes and other primates has long captivated and confused us. In a world where we barely look like other mammals, who might have paws, claws, hooves, bodies coated in thick hair, tails, and long muzzles, primates introduced an intermediate. Many primates have tails, bodies covered in hair, longer muzzles, and clearly behave like animals. But they also have hands. Not only do they have hands, they can use tools, but not as much as humans. And while most have tails, the ones most similar to us don’t.
To many ancient cultures, these creatures seemed like some sort of hybrid between man and beast. This connection was even more dramatic to those who lived in places without other primates when they saw one for the first time. To some, the human-animal cross was amusing and fascinating. To others, it threatened them. Humans naturally have a superiority complex when it comes to thinking about their place in the natural order. Many believed they were above animals, especially those who didn’t live around primates. They saw themselves as some kind of divine outlier completely above the natural order. Primates threatened that idea. Primates suggested there might be a connection between man and the beast.
While many different kinds of primates promoted these ideas, apes were certainly part of the forefront, being the ones closest to humans both genetically and physically as a result. Orangutan roughly translates to “man of the forest,” which clearly shows what people who lived around them thought of them. As a matter of fact, one of the first recorded interactions with gorillas might have been a case where Carthaginian explorers encountered them in the jungles and believed they were a kind of race of hairy humans.
Apes and other primates were also instrumental in proving that us having a connection to the animal kingdom was far more literal than we thought. The theory of evolution relied heavily on the study of our primate cousins to prove they were indeed our literal cousins. Of course, their evolutionary connection to us has caused a great deal of controversy for the last few centuries that continues to this day in one form or another.
But apes aren’t just a way to understand our connection to animals. They play a huge role in understanding ourselves.
Through studying the behaviors of many great ape species, we can better understand the evolutionary reasoning behind our own behaviors. By finding out what we have in common and what’s different between us and other apes behaviorally, we can explain our behavior easier. Studying the minds of apes has helped us study our own minds and what makes us unique compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. But in that pursuit to find what makes humanity special, we’ve found that many other animals, especially our great ape relatives, have many of the traits we once deemed exclusive to humans.
Studying apes is like learning about your relatives. You find what makes them special and what you two have in common. Then through them, you better understand what makes you special. You also begin to appreciate what you have in common with them more.
But our ape relatives are in danger. Every species of great ape besides our own (homo sapiens) is endangered. Some species and subspecies don’t even number in the thousands. The apes are disappearing fast due to poaching and habitat loss. If we don’t want to lose our most obvious connection to the natural world, we must act now to save it before it’s gone forever.
Between chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, the great apes are truly a great family. I love my ape family. I love it so much, in fact, that I have already written posts on gorillas and orangutans in the past. I encourage you to check those posts out. I also wrote a narrative about an extinct species that I believe was the Greatest Ape. Next week, the final post in this series will drop. Subscribe so you don’t miss the big reveal of perhaps the most important iconic animal yet, the FINAL MYSTERY CREATURE!
I would like to note that the book The Great Apes by Chris Herzfeld was an important resource in writing this post.
I love your mind and how you share information. I would encourage others to read your other Substack on Gorillas “ 98% Human” to understand more of the relationship between man and Apes.