Memories from the Jungle is set in an unspecified future in which Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by pollution and war. Most humans live in orbital stations surrounding the globe, while only animals still survive on the African continent, along with a few scientists who study them in a kind of zoo and experimental laboratory. Doogie, a chimpanzee, has been raised as a human by a zoological researcher, Gardner Evans, and his daughter Janet.

Doogie is no ordinary chimpanzee: gifted with an exceptional intelligence (perhaps the result of a scientific experiment), he has been taught a fairly sophisticated version of the human language, is capable of human emotions such as love and jealousy, and has a highly developed understanding of human behavior. After an accident to the spacecraft that was bringing him back to Earth from an orbital station, Doogie finds himself alone in the jungle. In order to survive, he must rediscover the very animal nature he has been trained to reject.