Tarzan, the king of the jungle, enters an isolated country called Minuni, inhabited by a people four times smaller than himself, the Minunians, who live in magnificent city-states which frequently wage war against each other.

Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours.

Spanish actor/Tarzan lookalike Esteban Miranda, who had been imprisoned in the village of Obebe, the cannibal, at the end of the previous novel, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, also appears in this adventure.

Burrough's view on what is a natural relationship between the sexes is neatly illustrated by a secondary narrative thread in the novel, that one about the Alali or Zertalacolols, an ape-like matriarchal people living in the thorny forests which isolate Minuni from the rest of the worlds.

Formerly pivotal characters would return only occasionally; Jane, La of Opar and Paul d'Arnot would each reappear once, while the Waziri or Jad-bal-ja the golden lion would only be brought in as needed to get Tarzan out of a tight spot.

The Ape Man would become a seemingly rootless adventurer intervening in the affairs of an endlessly changing gallery of secondary characters whose goals and entanglements were henceforth to form the basis of the novels' plots.

Tarzan and the Ant Men is referred to in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) as a book read by the young protagonist, Jean Louise ("Scout") Finch.