A white ape, as depicted by Joe Jusko
The White Apes are a feared race of semi-intelligent, gorilla-like monsters who inhabit the wilds of Barsoom, particularly the Toonolian Marshes and the Valley Dor.It is said that they are one of the primary causes of death amongst martian children. They are large creatures with an average height of 12 to 15 feet, some are known to be as small as eight feet. Like the Green Martians, they possess two sets of arms, the lower arms serving either as extra hands or extra feet, but they prefer two walk on two legs. As with almost all other Martian fauna, they are almost completely hairless, save for a shock of white hair on top of their heads.
In addition to living in the wild, the apes have been known to haunt the abandoned cities, like Korus, where John Carter and his faithful calot Woola nearly lost their lives to a pair of apes, and Aanthor, where the apes have run into the Green hordes so often that some of them have taken to wearing crude harnesses made from the skin of banths. They seem to have an interest in using human dwellings for shelter; when Ulysses Paxton encountered them outside of Ras Thavas' lab, his friend Hovan Du, who had the brain of a human but the body of a white ape, managed to negotiate with the apes for safe passage, in exchange for Carter and his mates leaving the gate to Thavas' lab open. Paxton asked Hovan Du why the apes requested this, but Hovan Du only replied that the apes' reasons were their own.