An acid scar on his face gave Gargantua a snarling, menacing expression, which the circus management exploited by generating publicity falsely exaggerating his purported hatred of humans.

After he was sold to Ringling Brothers by his previous owner, Gertrude Lintz, he was renamed, after François Rabelais's giant character, to sound more frightening.

Unable to deal with this aggression, the captain gave Buddy to Gertrude Lintz, a wealthy eccentric who looked after sick animals in Brooklyn.

[3] Gertrude Lintz treated the little gorilla back to health, including chewing his food for him, and along with her kennel-man, Richard "Dick" Kroener, trained and raised Buddy.

The arrangement came to an end one night in 1937 when the 7-year-old, 460 lb (210 kg) Buddy, frightened by thunder, broke out of his cage and climbed into bed with his "mother" for comfort; Gertrude Lintz contacted John Ringling shortly thereafter.

Stocky & truculent, he stared menacingly out of his cage, was characterized by Frank Buck as "the most ferocious, most terrifying and most dangerous of all living creatures.

Gargantua reached through, got no toe hold but wrenched Circusman North's left arm into the cage, bit & wrung it until Trainer Richard Kroner, pounding the gorilla with an iron stake, distracted its slow attention.

A necropsy performed at Johns Hopkins Hospital revealed that Gargantua had been suffering from several conditions at the time of his death, including skin disease and four impacted and rotten wisdom teeth.

The 1997 film Buddy, starring Rene Russo, is very loosely based on the early life of Gargantua/Buddy and another of Gertrude Lintz's gorillas, Massa.