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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.

The role of Cheeta was originally played by a different chimpanzee, who appeared as such in the first two Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and Tarzan and His Mate (1934). The first movie appearance of the chimpanzee who is the subject of this article was in the latter, in which he appeared uncredited as a young chimpanzee riding on the back of the original Cheeta. He was cast in the role of Cheeta himself in the other Weissmuller Tarzans that followed. 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 was a product of the movies, never appearing in any of the original Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. There are in fact no chimpanzees at all in the novels, the closest analog to Cheeta therein being Tarzan's monkey companion N'kima, who appears in several of the later books.

Cheeta became the longest lived known chimpanzee upon reaching the age 64 in 1996. As of 2006, Cheeta is still alive at the age of 74, living at a 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).

• Six year old American actor David Holt was the uncredited human double for Cheeta's predecessor in Tarzan the Fearless, a 1933 film staring Buster Crabbe.
• 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 baptized a popular Brazilian candy, "Bala Chita", which also features the chimp on the package. Many people in Brazil believe that Cheeta is female, since that is a female name in Portuguese.
• The October 4, 2006 edition of the Palm Springs newspaper The Desert Sun reported that Cheeta received his first-ever visit from famed primatologist Jane Goodall the previous day.
• Cheeta was bought from Henry Trefflich, a New York animal importer and dealer.

• Pictures of Cheeta in his retirement home by photographer Frederic Neema
• Pictures of Cheeta's 74th Birthday by photographer Frederic Neema
• Guinness Entry
• Cheeta on NationalGeographic.com
• cheetathechimp.org
• Tarzan's chimp Cheeta celebrates 74th birthday
• Cheeta at the Internet Movie Database