Novels about great apes and humans continue to be consistently popular with the reading public, sometimes reaching best-seller status. Media reviews of these books rarely comment on their primatological roots, nor do primatological journals review them. In a non-quantitative, pilot study, I scrutinize six prominent novels, in terms of three questions: How do the novels make use of primatology? What aspects of primatology do they use? How accurate is their use of primatology? Such novels overwhelmingly concentrate on language, with intelligence and sexuality lagging far behind; other topics, such as culture or technology, receive little or no attention. Apes in nature are rarely mentioned. Inaccuracies abound, even at the most basic level of primatological knowledge that easily could be remedied. Both authors and primatologists would benefit from more informative interaction before publication.

关于类人猿和人类的小说继续受到大众读者的欢迎，有时甚至达到畅销书的地位。这些书的媒体评论很少评论它们的灵长类学根源，灵长类学期刊也不评论它们。在一项非定量的试点研究中，我从三个问题的角度审视了六本著名小说：小说如何利用灵长类动物学？他们使用灵长类动物学的哪些方面？他们对灵长类动物学的使用有多准确？这类小说以语言为主，智商和性落后；其他主题，例如文化或技术，很少或根本没有受到关注。自然界中的猿类很少被提及。不准确的地方比比皆是，即使是在灵长类动物学知识的最基本水平上，也很容易纠正。