Cheetah Dead: 'Tarzan' Chimpanzee Dies at Near 80 [UPDATE]

From 'Project Nim' to 'Rise from the Planet from the Apes,' 2011 was the entire year from the primate. Regrettably, it appears like things will finish on the sad note. Cheetah, the chimpanzee most widely known for his operate in the 'Tarzan' movies from the '30s, died on Sunday of kidney failure. He was almost eighty years old. Cheetah made an appearance in Tarzan films between 1932 and 1934 -- particularly 'Tarzan the Ape Man' and 'Tarzan and the Mate' -- opposite actor Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan. "He was very compassionate," Darlene Cobb, the outreach director at Suncoast Primate Sanctuary told The Polk Tribune. "He could know if I had been getting a great day or perhaps a bad day. He was always looking to get me to laugh if he thought I had been getting a poor day. He was very in tune to human feelings." Cheetah outlived normal captivity chimps by nearly 4 decades. It does not appear that Cheetah left out any children. UPDATE: Or possibly Cheetah did not die over the past weekend. Within an interview with Dork Itzkoff from the NY Occasions, Dr. Steve Ross, the assistant director in the Lester E. Fisher Center for that Study and Conservation of Apes in the Lincoln subsequently Park Zoo in Chicago, stated it had been "very improbable" that Cheetah live to become nearly 80, which records were dodgy at best. The plot, as the saying goes, thickens... [Polk Tribune via NYT/ArtsBeat] [Photo: AP] Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook