Plot
On a stormy evening, cargo is being unloaded at a New York harbor. Professor Joanna Barnes begs the dock foreman to be careful with one crate, which holds a 3,000 year old statue. The foreman calls up to Murray, the crane operator, but a lightning bolt strikes the line and the crate crashes to the ground. A wisp of smoke escapes the statue, manifesting into a long-imprisoned animal demon named Ral. Barnes confirms the statue is intact while Ral eavesdrops, then slips away from the harbor.
Outside the firehouse, a stray dog huddles near the entrance. Upstairs, the team is watching a Lassie movie. When Peter Venkman muses that it would be great to have a dog around, Slimer is jealous, wishing he were man's best friend instead. Outside, Ral engulfs the passing dog in smoke. Slimer brings the dog inside and the team agrees to keep it, but as it licks Slimer its expression changes. The dog refuses the meal Slimer prepares, stands on two legs to dump the food in the trash, and eats Slimer's sandwich instead. When Peter tries to make it do tricks, the dog grabs him by the collar and tells him it does not beg, fetch, or play dead. It then arms itself with a Proton Pack, slides down the fire pole, vaporizes it, and drives off in Ecto-1.
Janine Melnitz shows the team that the goldfish are acting strangely too. Meanwhile, Ral reaches the Bronx Zoo, and the Ghostbusters get a call from there. They suit up and hail a taxi, but Egon Spengler notices they are going the wrong way: the driver is a gorilla. Stuck in traffic full of animals at the wheel, Winston Zeddemore spots the stolen Ecto-1. As the team sneaks toward it the animals charge, and Peter is about to fire when Egon reminds him these are animals, not ghosts. They take the car and head for the zoo.
The zoo is too quiet, but Egon reads a P.K.E. level high enough to power a small city. Animals ambush the team, strip them of their equipment, and imprison them. Ral rallies the beasts and leads a march to take over New York. Janine and Slimer arrive, hide, and free the Ghostbusters. In the city, Ecto-1 cuts off the march and the animals chase it, not realizing only Janine and Slimer are aboard, leaving Ral surrounded. Ray Stantz and Winston work from Ecto-2 while Peter and Egon pop up from behind garbage cans, but Ral is fast enough to dodge the proton streams and nearly makes the team shoot one another.
Egon and Peter give chase on their untested gravitational flux skates. Egon radios Ray to put Ecto-2's loudspeaker on a higher frequency, and the dog-whistle pitch stops Ral cold. While he is distracted, Peter and Egon use the skates to scale the side of a building, then confine and trap Ral. The animals all revert to normal. The dog Slimer found runs off to its real owner, a little girl who thanks the Ghostbusters for reuniting her with her dog, Sydney. Back at the firehouse, Janine introduces a puppy that speaks its own name, "Buster," and everyone runs off before she can explain it is only a toy.
Characters
Ral is the episode's antagonist, a semi-corporeal animal demon imprisoned in a stone statue for 3,000 years after mankind tricked and captured him. Voiced by Avery Schreiber, Ral's power anthropomorphizes every animal he passes, granting them human-level intelligence, speech, and physical dexterity. His animal-like senses and reflexes make him difficult to trap in direct combat. He refers to all animals as his "children," a trait shared with other RGB entities such as Samhain. In Insight Editions' Tobin's Spirit Guide, Ral (spelled "Rall") is classified as a Class 7 entity with origins in sub-Saharan Africa, and the statue's history is traced from Cleopatra's Egypt through Caesar's Rome before it eventually winds up in New York.3
Professor Joanna Barnes is an academic who discovered Ral's statue and arranged its shipment to New York. Voiced by Linda Gary, Barnes appears only at the harbor in the opening sequence. Her name is never spoken in the episode itself; it was recovered from the episode call sheet.2
Sydney is the stray dog the Ghostbusters adopt at the start of the episode. Transformed by Ral, Sydney becomes the episode's first demonstration of the demon's power, hijacking Ecto-1 after strapping on a Proton Pack. Sydney's real owner, a little girl, is reunited with her at the episode's resolution. Ral's army includes a wide range of intelligent animals, each voiced by a member of the regular and guest cast: Maurice LaMarche plays the gorilla taxi driver, Avery Schreiber voices Sydney and the rhino, Linda Gary voices an orangutan, Arsenio Hall voices a brown bear and fish, Kath Soucie voices a turkey and fish, Dave Coulier voices a large gander and road hog, and Frank Welker voices a hyena.2
Buster is a talking toy dog Janine presents to the team at the episode's close. After the chaos of the Ral incident, everyone flees when the puppy introduces itself by name, and Janine has to shout after them that it is just a toy.
Equipment
The Ghostbusters use their standard gear, including the Proton Pack, particle thrower, Ghost Trap, P.K.E. Meter, and Ecto-1. The episode also brings out Ecto-2 and a pair of gravitational flux skates, which Egon describes as operating on the principle of controlled gravitational flux amplification. Worn here by Egon and Peter for the first time, the skates allow the pair to pursue and ultimately scale the side of a building to corner Ral for trapping. Janine's car appears here as well, marking the third vehicle she is shown owning across the series.
Trivia
The episode was recorded on May 18 and June 10, 1987.2 "It's a Jungle Out There" was the working title of the episode "A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn" before that title was changed to reflect a literary reference.4
While trying to bust Ral, Peter references Marlin Perkins, the zoologist and former host of "Wild Kingdom." Kylie Griffin would name-drop Marlin Perkins again years later in the Extreme Ghostbusters episode "Slimer's Sacrifice."
Professor Barnes is never addressed by name in the episode's dialogue. Her full name, Joanna Barnes, appears only in the episode's production call sheet.2
Release
In the original broadcast order the episode followed "Baby Spookums" and preceded "Slimer, Is That You?". On home video it was placed between "Baby Spookums" and "The Bogeyman Is Back" on Volume 3, Disc 3 of the boxed DVD collection.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 25. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1987). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "It's a Jungle Out There" (1987).
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Insight Editions (2016). Tobin's Spirit Guide, Section III: Metaspecters, pp. 44-45.
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Michael Edens (2009). The Real Ghostbusters, "A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn" (1987) Episode Introduction. Time Life Entertainment.
