King Kong

The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island

Author: Weta Workshop


The Kong, Megaprimatus kong, is a large, rare, gorilla-like pongine great ape from Skull Island. The humans who settled on the island long ago were a devoted culture who revered the giant Kong apes that abound throughout their art. Some have speculated the nonhuman great apes may have arrived with the colonists, alluding to a symbiosis between the humans and the ancestors of Kong. It measures 18-25 feet tall.

At the center of Skull Island, living in a cavernous lair suspended high above the jungle, and lord of all he surveyed, was Kong. One of the last of his kind, Kong was a huge and powerful great ape, far larger than any hitherto known species. He was the king of his world, a nightmarish force to the Skull Islander humans, and an anomaly to science. Kong became the icon for the wonder and power of nature in his time.

When discovered by the Western world, sadly Kong was probably the sole representative of his species. Though he was almost certainly part of a family and perhaps a society once, he had been on his own for a long time. As such, this great ape’s behavior had changed as a reflection of his loneliness and in response the shouldering of the pressures of his world upon him as an individual and not a member of a group.