These were not, in fact, intended to be gorillas, but rather the fictional race of "great apes" which play a prominent role in Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" and many of its sequels. Burroughs seems to have envisioned these creatures as a type of "missing link" between humans and the other apes. These are the creatures who adopted and raised Tarzan when he was stranded alone in the jungle as a baby. The great apes were supposed to have a highly-developed language, and "Tarzan" is a word in the great ape language meaning "white skin."