The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

by Desmond Morris

  For safety’s sake, he tends to concentrate on areas where cheap fakes are out of the question. If he can afford a small motor car, he buys a medium-sized one; if he can afford a medium-sized one, he buys a large one; if he can afford a single large one, he buys a second car as a runabout; if large cars become too common, he buys a small, but wildly expensive foreign sports car; if large rear-lights become the fashion, he buys the latest model with even bigger ones, ‘to let the people behind know he is in front’, as the advertisers so succinctly express it. The one thing he does not do is to buy a row of life-sized, cardboard models of Rolls-Royces and display them outside his garage. There are no fake diamonds in the world of the status-climbing fanatic.

  Motor cars are a single example, and an important one because they are so public, but the ardent status-struggler cannot stop there. He must extend himself and his bank balance in all directions if he is to paint a convincing picture for his higher-status rivals. The whole hire-purchase, mortgage and overdraft system depends for its survival on this expression of the powerful up-grading urge in terms of dominance mimics.

  Unhappily, the extravagant trappings of the unrelenting status-seeker acquire such an importance that they appear to be more than they are. They are, after all, only mimics of dominance, not dominance itself. True dominance, true social status, is related to the possession of power and influence over super-tribal subordinates, not to the possession of a second colour television set. Of course, if you can easily afford a second colour television set, then it is a natural reflection of your status and acts as a true status symbol. A second colour television set, when you can only just afford the first one, is a different matter. It may help to impress on the members of the social level above you that you are ready to join them, but it in no way ensures that you will do so. All your rivals, at your own level, will be busily installing their own second colour television sets with the same idea in mind, but it is the fundamental law of the hierarchy that only a few from your level will make the grade to the one above. They, the lucky ones, can justifiably hang wreaths around their second colour television sets. Their dominance mimics worked the trick. All the rest, the power failures, must sit there, surrounded by the expensive clutter of the dominance mimics that have suddenly revealed themselves for what they are: illusions of grandeur. The realization that although they are valuable aids to successful dominance ladder-climbing, they do not actually guarantee it, is a bitter pill to swallow.

  The damage caused by the exaggerated pursuit of dominance mimicry can be enormous. It not only leads to a condition of depressing disillusionment for the less successful status-seekers, it also demands such great efforts of the supertribesman that he may have little time or energy for anything else.

  The male status-seeker who indulges in an excess of dominance mimicry is often driven to neglect his family. This forces his mate to take over the masculine parental role in the home. Taking such a step provides a psychologically damaging atmosphere for the children, which can easily warp their own sexual identities when they mature. All that the young child will see is that its father has lost his leading role inside the family. The fact that he has sacrificed it to a struggle for dominance outside, in the larger sphere of the super-tribe, will mean little or nothing in the child’s brain. If it matures with a well-balanced state of mental health it will be surprising. Even the older child, who comes to understand the super-tribal status race and boasts about his father’s status achievements, will find them small compensation for the absence of an active paternal influence. Despite his mounting status in the outside world, the father can easily become a family joke.

  It is very bewildering for our struggling super-tribesman. He has obeyed all the rules, but something has gone wrong. The super-status demands of the human zoo are cruel indeed. Either he fails and becomes disillusioned, or he succeeds and loses control of his family. Worse still, he can work so hard that he loses control of his family and still fails.

  This brings us to another and more violent way in which certain members of the super-tribe can react to the frustrations of the dominance struggle. Students of animal behaviour refer to it as the re-direction of aggression. At the best of times it is an unpleasant phenomenon; at worst, it is literally lethal. One can see it very clearly when two rival animals meet. Each wants to attack the other and each is afraid to do so. If the aroused aggression cannot find an outlet against the frightening opponent who caused it, then it will find expression elsewhere. A scapegoat is sought, a milder, less intimidating individual, and the pent-up anger is vented in his direction. He has done nothing to warrant it. His only crime was to be weaker and less frightening than the original opponent.

  In the status race it frequently occurs that a subordinate dare not express his anger openly towards a dominant. Too much is at stake. He has to re-direct it elsewhere. It may land on his unfortunate children, his wife, or his dog. In former times, the flanks of his horse also suffered; today, it is the gearbox of his car. He may have the luxury of staff subordinates of his own that he can lash with his tongue. If he has inhibitions in all these directions there is always one person left: himself. He can give himself ulcers.

  In extreme cases, when everything seems utterly hopeless, he can increase his self-inflicted aggression to the maximum: he can kill himself. (Zoo animals have been known to inflict serious mutilations on themselves, biting their flesh to the bone when unable to get at their enemies through the bars, but suicide seems to be a uniquely human activity.) Views concerning the main causes of suicide have differed widely, but hardly anyone denies that re-directed aggression is a major factor. One authority went so far as to claim that: ‘Nobody kills himself unless he also wants to kill others or at least wishes some other person to die.’ This is perhaps slightly over-stating the case. A man who kills himself because of the pain of an incurable disease scarcely falls into this category. It would be fanciful to suggest that he wants to kill the doctor who has failed to cure him. What he wants is release from pain. But re-direction of aggression does seem to account for a large number of cases. Here are some of the facts that support this idea.

  There is a higher suicide rate in big towns and cities than in rural areas. In other words, where the status race is hottest, the suicide rate is highest. There are more male suicides than female suicides, but the females are catching up fast. In other words, the sex that is most involved in the status race has the highest suicide rate, and now that females are becoming increasingly emancipated and joining in the race more, they are sharing its hazards. There is a higher rate of suicide during periods of economic crisis. In other words, when the status race gets into difficulties at the top, there is an increase of re-directed aggression down the hierarchy, with disastrous results.

  There is a lower rate of suicide during times of war. The suicide curves for the present century show two huge dips during the periods of the two world wars. In other words, why kill yourself if you can kill someone else? It is the inhibitions about killing the people who are dominating and frustrating the potential suicide that force him to re-direct his violence. He has the choice of killing a less daunting scapegoat, or himself. In peace-time, inhibitions about killing make him turn most often towards himself, but during war-time he is ordered to kill, and the suicide rate goes down.

  The relationship between suicide and murder is a close one. To a certain extent they are two sides of the same coin. Countries with a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate, and vice versa. It is as if there is just so much intense aggression to be let loose, and if it does not take the one form it will take the other. Which way it goes will depend on how inhibited a particular community is about committing murder. If the inhibitions are weak, then the suicide rate goes down. It is similar to the war-time situation, where inhibitions against killing were actively and purposely reduced.

  By and large, however, our modern super-tribes are remarkably heavily inhibited where acts of murder are concerned. It is difficult fo
r the majority of us, who have never had to toss the murder/suicide coin, to appreciate the conflict, although in theory it seems biologically more unnatural to kill oneself rather than someone else. Despite this the figures go the other way. In Britain during recent times the yearly suicide figures have hovered around the 5,000 mark, while the yearly (detected) murders have kept below the 200 level. What is more, if we look at these murders, we find something unexpected. Most of us gain our ideas about murder from newspaper reports and detective novels, but newspapers and thriller-writers tend to concentrate on murders that will sell copies of papers and books. In reality the most common form of homicide is an unglamorous and squalid little family affair in which the victim is a close relative. There were 172 murders in Britain in 1967, and 81 of these were of this type. Furthermore, in 51 cases the murderer followed his act of homicide by committing suicide. Many of these latter cases are of the kind where a man, driven to turn his frustrated aggression on to himself, first kills his loved ones and then himself. Often, it appears that he cannot bear to leave them behind to suffer from the mess he has made, and so dispatches them first. Students of murder have discovered that an interesting change may then come over the killer. If he does not finish the job off and add his own corpse quickly to the rest, he is likely to experience such an enormous relief from tension that he suddenly finds he no longer wants to kill himself. Society dominated and frustrated him to the point where he was ready to take his own life, but now the slaying of his family consummates his revenge on society so effectively that his depression lifts and he feels released. This leaves him in a difficult situation. There are bodies lying about and all the signs that he has committed a multiple murder, when in fact it was only part of a desperate suicide. Such are the nightmare extremes of re-directed aggression.

  Most of us, happily, do not reach such extremes. Our families may experience nothing more than our arrival home occasionally in a disgruntled mood. Many supertribesmen can find an outlet by watching other people kill villains on television or at the cinema. It is significant that in strongly subordinated or suppressed communities, the local cinemas show a remarkably high proportion of films of violence. In fact, it can be argued that the thrills of fictional violence have an appeal that is directly proportional to the degree of dominance frustration that is being experienced in real life.

  Since all the large super-tribes, by their very size, involve extensive dominance frustration, the prevalence of fictional violence is widespread. To prove the point it is only necessary to compare the international sales of books by authors of violent fiction with those of other writers. In a recent survey of the all-time best-sellers in the world of fiction, the name of one author who specializes in extremes of violence appeared seven times in the top twenty, with a total score of over 34 million copies sold. In the world of television the picture is much the same. A detailed analysis of transmissions in the New York area in 1954 revealed that there were no less than 6,800 aggressive incidents in a single week.

  Clearly there is a powerful urge to watch other people being subjected to the most extreme forms of domination. Whether this acts as a valuable and harmless outlet for suppressed aggression is a hotly debated point. As with dominance mimicry, the cause of violence-watching is obvious, but the value is dubious. Reading about or watching an act of persecution does not alter the reader’s or watcher’s real-life situation. He may enjoy the experience of the fiction while he is involved in it, but when it is over and he re-emerges into the cold light of reality, he is still as dominated as he was before. The relief from tension is therefore only a temporary one, like scratching an insect bite. What is more, scratching a bite is likely to increase the inflammation. Repeated involvement in fictional mayhem tends to intensify the preoccupation with the whole phenomenon of violence. The best that can be said for it is that, while it is going on, the audience itself is not performing acts of violence.

  The action of re-directing aggression has often been referred to as the ‘... and the office-boy kicked the cat’ phenomenon. This implies that only the lowest members of a hierarchy will turn their blocked anger on to an animal. Unhappily for animals this is not the case, and animal protection societies have the figures to prove it. Cruelty to animals has provided a major outlet for re-directed aggression from the times of the earliest civilizations, right up to the present day, and it has certainly not been confined to the lowest levels in the social hierarchy. From the slaughters of the Roman amphitheatres, to the bear-baiting of the Middle Ages and the bull-fighting of modern times, the infliction of pain and death on animals has undeniably had a mass appeal for members of super-tribal communities. It is true that ever since our early ancestors turned to hunting as a method of survival, man has inflicted pain and death on other animal species, but the motives were different in prehistoric times. In the strict sense, there was no cruelty then, the definition of cruelty being ‘taking delight in another’s pain’.

  In super-tribal times we have killed animals for four reasons: to obtain food, clothing and other materials; to exterminate pests and vermin; to further scientific knowledge; and to experience the pleasure of killing. The first and second of these two reasons we share with our early hunting ancestors, the third and fourth are novelties of the super-tribal condition. It is the fourth that concerns us here. The others may, of course, involve elements of cruelty, but it is not their primary characteristic.

  The history of deliberate cruelty to other species has taken a strange course. The early hunter had a kinship with animals. He respected them. So, rather naturally, did the early farming peoples. But the moment that urban populations began to develop, large groups of human beings became cut off from direct contact with animals, and the respect was lost. As civilizations grew, so did man’s arrogance. He shut his eyes to the fact that he was just as much an animal as any other species. A great gulf appeared: now only he had a soul and other animals did not. They were no more than brute beasts put on earth for his pleasure. With the spreading influence of the Christian religion, animals were in for a rough passage. We need not go into the details, but it is worth noting that as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX refused permission for the opening of an animal protection office in Rome on the grounds that man owed duties to his fellow men, but none to the lower animals. Later in the same century a Jesuit lecturer wrote: ‘Brute beasts, not having understanding and therefore not being persons, cannot have any rights ... We have, then, no duties of charity nor duties of any kind to the lower animals, as neither to stocks and stones.’

  Many Christians were beginning to have doubts about this attitude, but it was not until Darwin’s theory of evolution began to have a major impact on human thought that man and the animals came closer together again. The reacceptance of man’s affinity with animals, which had been so natural to the early hunters, led to a second era of respect. As a result, our attitude towards deliberate cruelty to animals has been changing rapidly during the past hundred years; but despite increasingly powerful disapproval, the phenomenon is still very much with us. Public displays are rare, but private savageries persist. We may respect animals today, but they are still our subordinates, and as such are highly vulnerable objects for the unloading of re-directed aggression.

  Next to animals, children are the most vulnerable subordinates and, despite greater inhibitions here, they too are subjected to a great deal of re-directed violence. The viciousness with which animals, children and other helpless subordinates are subjected to persecution is a measure of the weight of the dominance pressures imposed on the persecutors.

  Even in war, where killing is glorified, this mechanism can be seen in operation. Sergeants and other N.C.O.s frequently dominate their men with extreme ruthlessness, not merely to produce discipline, but also to arouse hatred, with the deliberate intention of seeing this hatred re-directed at the enemy in battle.

  Looking back, we can see now how the unnaturally heavy weight of dominance from above, which is
an inevitable characteristic of the super-tribal condition, has taken its toll. The abnormality of the situation for the human animal, who only a few thousand years ago was a simple tribal hunter, has produced patterns of behaviour which, by animal standards, are also abnormal: the exaggerated preoccupation with dominance mimicry, the excitement of watching acts of violence, the deliberate cruelty towards animals, children and other extreme subordinates, the acts of murder and, if all else fails, the acts of self-cruelty and self-destruction. Our super-tribesman, neglecting his family to drag himself one more rung up the social ladder, gloating over the brutalities in his books and films, kicking his dogs, beating his children, persecuting his underlings, torturing his victims, killing his enemies, giving himself stress diseases and blowing his brains out, is not a pretty sight. He has often boasted about being unique in the animal world, and on this score he certainly is.

  It is true that other species also indulge in intense status struggles and that the attaining of dominance is often a time-consuming element in their social lives. In their natural habitats, however, wild animals never carry such behaviour to the extreme limits observable in the modern human condition. As I said at the outset, only in the cramped quarters of zoo cages do we find anything approaching the human state. If, in captivity, a group of animals is assembled which is too numerous for the species concerned, and they are packed too tightly together, then, with an inadequate cage environment, serious trouble will certainly develop. Persecutions, mutilations and killings will occur. Neuroses will appear. But even the least experienced zoo director would never contemplate crowding and cramping a group of animals to the extent that man has crowded and cramped himself in his modern cities and towns. That level of abnormal grouping, the director would predict with confidence, would cause a complete fragmentation and collapse of the normal social pattern of the animal species concerned. He would be astonished at the folly of suggesting that he should attempt such an arrangement with, say, his monkeys, his carnivores, or his rodents. Yet mankind does this willingly to himself; he struggles under just these conditions and somehow manages to survive. By all the rules, the human zoo should be a screaming mad-house by now, disintegrating into complete social confusion. Cynics might argue that this is indeed the case, but plainly it is not. The trend towards denser living, far from abating, is ever gaining momentum. The various kinds of behaviour disorders I have outlined in this chapter are startling, not so much for their existence as for their rarity in relation to the population sizes involved. Remarkably few of the struggling super-tribesmen succumb to the extreme forms of action I have discussed. For every desperate status-seeker, home-wrecker, murderer, suicide, persecutor, or ulcer-nurser, there are hundreds of men and women who not only survive, but thrive under the extraordinary conditions of the super-tribal assemblages. This, more than anything else, is a truly astonishing testimony to the enormous tenacity, resilience and ingenuity of our species.