Tantor is a generic name for elephants in Mangani, the fictional language of the great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Tantor's next chronological appearance is in the fourth novel, The Son of Tarzan, written and published prior to Jungle Tales.

This scene, in which Tantor recognizes his former companion after the latter had been absent many years, confirms that this elephant is the same as the one originally befriended by Tarzan.

In this version, Tantor is a sweet-natured yet highly phobic elephant afraid of many things, such as germs and frightening sounds.

[citation needed] In books two and three of the Alastair Reynolds series Poseidon's Children, Tantors are the name adopted by a number of cognitively enhanced elephants who are imbued with rudimentary speech and inner monologue, the use of tools, a sense of identity and so on via neural implants, and which travel to the planets Crucible and Orison aboard holoships, supported by members of the Akinya spacefaring family.