Edgar Rice Burroughs' in his original Tarzan of the Apes describes the infamous "Dum-Dum" ritual. This ritual, practiced by the Great Apes (as Burroughs called them) "marked important events in the life of the tribe—a victory, the capture of a prisoner, the killing of some large fierce denizen of the jungle, the death or accession of a king, and were conducted with set ceremonialism".

The mysterious thing about the Dum-Dum ceremony is that the apes Burroughs writes about are a tribe of large anthropoid apes which he calls the Great Apes, but they are apparently not gorillas, since Burroughs has scenes depicting gorillas as enemies of the Great Apes. During this particular Dum-Dum dance, celebrating the slaying of another tribe's ape, female apes beat drums while males dance and attack the dead enemy gorilla. The Dum-Dum culminates with the apes devouring the mutilated dead ape.

Was Burroughs referring to Chimpanzees as Great Apes or did he simply invent a fictional species of apes for the purposes of his stories? One gets the impression from the Tarzan books that the Great Apes are larger than chimpanzees, but it remains unclear what Burroughs intended in this case.

One would assume that gorillas also practiced the Dum-Dum, but perhaps not. Burroughs seems to accord the jungle gorillas less sophistication than his Great Apes.