As far as the treatment of apes is concerned, much of the film is firmly grounded in reality, as a viewing of Project Nim, a documentary based on Elizabeth Hess’s book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would be Human, clearly demonstrates. Nim was born in 1973, in a primate research facility in Oklahoma, and was taken from his mother when he was only ten days old, to be used in a sign-language experiment.
就大猩猩在片中所受到的待遇来看，这部电影的大部分内容都是来源于现实的，正如《尼姆计划》这部基于伊丽莎白·赫斯的著作《尼姆·猩猩斯基：一只可能是人类的黑猩猩》的记录片所明确表述的那样。片中的黑猩猩尼姆于1973年出生于美国俄克拉荷马州的一个灵长类动物庇护中心，出生10天都就被从它母亲手中夺走用以进行一项手语实验研究。