Cheeta (sometimes billed as Cheetah, Cheta and Chita) is a chimpanzee character appearing in numerous Hollywood Tarzan movies of the 1930s-1960s as well as the 1966-1968 television series, as the ape sidekick of the title character, Tarzan. Cheeta's role in these films is to provide comic relief, convey messages between Tarzan and his allies, and occasionally lead Tarzan's other animal friends to the ape-man's rescue. Cheeta has usually been characterized as male, but sometimes as female, and has been portrayed by chimpanzees of both sexes. 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 Nkima, who appears in several of the later books.
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