Cheeta

Cheeta with Lex Barker

This article is about a famous chimpanzee. For the feline animal, see Cheetah.

Cheeta (born April 9, 1932) is a male chimpanzee noted for appearing in numerous movies and television shows, most famously many Hollywood Tarzan films of the 1930s and 1940s, in which he portrayed a fictional chimp of the same name. His first movie appearance was the second Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film, Tarzan and His Mate, when he appeared riding the back of the then-current chimpanzee playing the role that made him famous. Cheeta also appeared in Doctor Dolittle (1967) with Rex Harrison, the chimp's last role before retirement.

While inextricably associated in the public mind with Tarzan, Cheeta as a character never appeared in any of the original Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, only the Tarzan movies. In the novels chimpanzees never appear, though in the later books Tarzan has a monkey companion named N'kima.

Cheeta became the longest lived known chimpanzee upon reaching the age 64 in 1996. Cheeta is still alive at the age of 74, living at the primate sanctuary called Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered and Threatened Apes - or CHEETA in Palm Springs, California. He is cited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's oldest primate (presumably meaning oldest non-human primate). Note that there is some confusion regarding his birthday; he was born April 9, 1932, most of the same sources imply that his first movie was Tarzan the Ape Man, which was released on March 25, 1932. In fact, the role of Cheeta is one of at least two chimpanzees, the first of whom appeared in the first two Weismuller Tarzans. The chimpanzee who is the subject of this article, however, appeared in an uncredited role as a young chimpanzee in 1934's Tarzan and His Mate, then played the role of Cheeta in the other Weismuller Tarzans that followed.

In retirement Cheeta watches television and makes paintings which are sold to benefit primate-related charities. He often watches his old films with his grandson, Jiggs.

Cheeta's name should not be confused with species of big cat known as the cheetah.

Cheeta baptized a popular Brazilian candy, "Bala Chita", which also features the ape on the package. Curiously, everyone in Brazil believes that Cheeta is a she, since that whould be a female name in Portuguese.

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