Kerchak and Kala's baby is a minor character in Disney's 1999 animated feature film, Tarzan. He was the son of Kerchak and Kala.
Appearances[]
Tarzan[]
The baby gorilla first appears during the song "Two Worlds" and the beginning of the film, where he is seen crawling from his mother and onto Kerchak's arms. He sees a chameleon. The baby gorilla almost falls out of the nest, but his father stops him. He is then seen playing with his father by climbing up his back and sliding off. He then runs to his mother Kala and she rubs her nose with his and then tosses him into the air.
One night, as Kala and Kerchak sleep, the baby gorilla notices a frog hopping by and wanders away from his parents, chasing the frog deep into the jungle, unaware that the ferocious leopard, Sabor, is out hunting. When Sabor spots the baby, she begins chasing him; the baby gorilla tries to race back to his parents, but Sabor corners him.
Kerchak and Kala hear their son's cries as he is being eaten alive and race to try to protect him, but Kerchak finds it impossible, so they stop. Kala weeps in Kerchak's arms at the loss of their only child.
Sometime after, as Kerchak moves the troop to another home, Kala hears another baby crying, leading her to a treehouse, where she finds a human baby boy whose parents were also killed by Sabor. Though Sabor is still inside the treehouse and gives chase, Kala manages to save the baby and escape Sabor. When Kala brings the baby back to her family and asks Kerchak if she can keep it, Kerchak agrees, while claiming that it will not replace the baby they lost previously.
Kala then names the baby boy Tarzan. Even though Tarzan and Kala's biological son never meet, in a sense, they are technically adoptive brothers. His death, along with the deaths of Tarzan's parents John and Alice Clayton, are avenged by Tarzan when Sabor is finally killed.
Trivia[]
- In the original novel, the character is the son of Kala and Tublat. He died when Kala tried to flee an attacking Kerchak. She carried his corpse with her, until she came across Tarzan. Taking in the human baby, she left the remains of her own child in Tarzan's crib.
- The baby's playful curiosity is what eventually led to his death, and it was actually foreshadowed the first time we meet him. First, he notices and curiously reaches for a chameleon, nearly falling out of his nest high in the trees in the process, but luckily Kerchak was there to intervene and catch him. Unfortunately, the baby's curiosity gets the best of him for a second time when he notices a frog and is able to chase it deep into the jungle with no intervention from anyone this time, leading to the infant's deadly encounter with Sabor.
Gallery[]