The Human Zoo

by Desmond Morris

  There is a large rodent, looking like a guinea-pig on stilts, called an agouti. In the wild it peels certain vegetables before eating them. It holds the vegetables in its front feet and pares them with its teeth as we might pare an orange. Only when it has completely skinned the object does it start to eat. In captivity, this peeling urge refuses to be frustrated. If a perfectly clean apple or potato is given to an agouti, the animal still peels it fastidiously and, after eating it, devours the peel as well. It even attempts to ‘peel’ a piece of bread.

  Turning to the human zoo, the picture is strikingly similar. When we are born into a modern super-tribe, we are thrust into a world where human brilliance has already solved most of the basic survival problems. Just like the zoo animals, we find that our environment emanates security. Most of us have to do a certain amount of work, but thanks to technical developments, there is plenty of time left over for participating in the Stimulus Struggle. We are no longer totally absorbed in the problems of finding food and shelter, rearing our offspring, defending our territories, or avoiding our enemies. If, against this, you argue that you never stop working, then you must ask yourself a key question: could you do less work and still survive? The answer in many cases would have to be ‘yes’. Working is the modern supertribesman’s equivalent of hunting for food and, like the animal zoo inmates, he frequently performs the pattern much more elaborately than is strictly necessary. He creates problems for himself.

  Only those sectors of the super-tribe that are enduring what we would call severe hardship are working totally for survival. Even they, however, will be forced to indulge in the Stimulus Struggle when they can spare a moment, for the following special reason: The primitive, hunting tribesman may have been a ‘survival-worker’, but his tasks were varied and absorbing. The unfortunate subordinate supertribesman who is a ‘survival-worker’ is not so well off. Thanks to the division of labour and industrialization, he is driven to carry out intensely dull and repetitive work—the same routine thing day after day, year after year— making a mockery of the giant brain housed inside his skull. When he does get a few moments to himself, he needs to indulge in the Stimulus Struggle as much as anyone else in our modern world, for the problem of stimulation is concerned with variety as well as amount, with quality as well as quantity.

  For the others, as I have said, much of the activity is work for work’s sake and, if it is exciting enough, the straggler— a businessman, for instance—may find that he has scored so many points during his working day that, in his spare time, he can allow himself to relax and indulge in the mildest of activities. He might doze at his fireside with a soothing drink, or dine out at a quiet restaurant. If he dances when he dines, it is worth observing how he does it. The point is that our survival-worker may also go dancing in the evening. At first sight there appears to be a contradiction here, but closer examination reveals that there is a world of difference between the two kinds of dancing. Big-businessmen do not go in for strenuous competitive ballroom dancing, or wild abandoned folk-dancing. Their clumsy shuffling on the night-club floor (the small size of which has been tailored to their low-stimulus demands) is far from being competitive or wild. The unskilled workman is likely to become a skilled dancer; the skilled businessman is likely to be an unskilled dancer. In both cases the individual achieves a balance which is, of course, the goal of the Stimulus Struggle.

  In over-simplifying to make this point I have made the difference between the two types sound too much like a class distinction, which it is not. There are plenty of bored businessmen, suffering from repetitive office tasks that are almost as monotonous as packing boxes at a factory bench. They too will have to seek more stimulating forms of recreation in their spare time. Also, there are many simple labouring jobs where the work is rich and varied. The more fortunate labourer, in the evening, is more like the successful businessman, relaxing with a quiet drink and a chat.

  The under-stimulated housewife is another interesting phenomenon. Surrounded by her modern labour-saving devices, she has to invent labour-wasting devices to occupy her time. This is not as futile as it sounds. She can at least choose her activities: therein lies the whole advantage of super-tribal living. In primitive tribal life there was no choice. Survival made its own demands. You had to do this, and this, and this, or die. Now you can do this, or that, or the other— anything you like, so long as you realize that you have to do something, or break the golden rules of the Stimulus Struggle. And so the housewife, her washing spinning automatically away in the kitchen, must busy herself with something else. The possibilities are endless and the game can be a most attractive one. It can also go astray. Every so often it suddenly seems to the under-stimulated player that the compensating activity he or she is pursuing so relentlessly is really rather meaningless. What is the point of rearranging the furniture, or collecting postage stamps, or entering the dog for another dog-show? What does it prove? What does it achieve? This is one of the dangers of the Stimulus Struggle. Substitutes for real survival activity remain substitutes, no matter how you look at them. Disillusionment can easily set in, and then it has to be dealt with.

  There are several solutions. One is a rather drastic one. It is a variation of the Stimulus Struggle called Tempting Survival. The disillusioned teenager, instead of throwing a ball on a playing field, can throw it through a plate-glass window. The disillusioned housewife, instead of stroking the dog, can stroke the milkman. The disillusioned businessman, instead of stripping down the engine of his car, can strip down his secretary. The ramifications of this manoeuvre are dramatic. In no time at all the individual is involved in the true survival struggle of fighting for his social life. During such phases there is a characteristic loss of interest in furniture rearranging and postage-stamp collecting. After the chaos has died down, the old substitute activities suddenly seem more appealing again.

  A less drastic variant is Tempting Survival by Proxy. One form this takes consists of meddling in other people’s emotional lives and creating for them the sort of chaos that you would otherwise have to go through yourself. This is the malicious gossip principle: it is extremely popular because it is so much safer than direct action. The worst that can happen is that you lose some of your friends. If it is operated skilfully enough, the reverse may occur: they may become substantially more friendly. If your machinations have succeeded in breaking up their lives, they may have a greater need of your friendship than ever before. So, providing you are not caught out, this variation can have a double benefit: the vicarious thrill of watching their survival drama, and the subsequent increase in their friendliness.

  A second form of Tempting Survival By Proxy is less damaging. It consists of identifying yourself with the survival drama of fictional characters in books, films, plays and on television. This is even mote popular, and a giant industry has grown up to meet the enormous demands it creates. It is not only harmless and safe, but it also has the distinction of being remarkably inexpensive. The straight game of Tempting Survival can end up costing thousands, but this variant, for no more than a few shillings, can permit the Stimulus Straggler to indulge in seduction, rape, adultery, starvation, murder and pillage, without so much as leaving the comfort of his chair.

  2. If stimulation is too weak, you may increase your behaviour output by over-reacting to a normal stimulus.

  This is the over-indulgence principle of the Stimulus Struggle. Instead of setting up a problem to which you then have to find a solution, as in the last case, you simply go on and on reacting to a stimulus that is already to hand, although it no longer excites you in its original role. It has become merely an occupational device.

  In zoos where the public are permitted to feed the animals, certain bored species with nothing else to do will continue to eat until they become grossly over-weight. They will have already eaten their complete zoo diet and are no longer hungry, but idle nibbling is better than doing nothing. They get fatter and fatter, or become sick, or both. Goats eat mountains
of ice-cream cartons, paper, almost anything they are offered. Ostriches even consume sharp metal objects. A classic case concerns a female elephant. She was observed closely for a single typical zoo day and during that period (in addition to her normal, nutritionally adequate zoo diet) she devoured the following objects offered to her by the public: 1,706 peanuts, 1,330 sweets, 1,089 pieces of bread, 811 biscuits, 198 segments of orange, 17 apples, 16 pieces of paper, 7 ice-creams, 1 hamburger, 1 boot-lace and 1 lady’s white leather glove. There are cases on record of zoo bears dying of suffocation caused by the enormous pressure of food in their stomachs. Such are the sacrifices made to the Stimulus Struggle.

  One of the strangest examples of this phenomenon concerns a large male gorilla which regularly ate, regurgitated, and then re-ate his food, performing his own version of a Roman banquet. This process was taken a stage further by a sloth bear which was frequently observed to regurgitate its food more than a hundred times, each time eating it up again with the gurgling and sucking sounds typical of its species.

  If the possibilities of over-indulging in feeding behaviour are limited and there is nothing else to do, an animal can always clean itself excessively, extending the performance until long after its feathers or its fur are perfectly cleansed and groomed. This, too, can lead to trouble. I recall one sulphur-crested cockatoo that had only a single feather left, a long yellow crest-plume, the rest of its body being as naked as an oven-chicken’s. That was an extreme case, but not an isolated one. Mammals can scratch and lick bare patches until sores develop and set up their own vicious circle of irritation and picking.

  For the human Stimulus Straggler, the unpleasant forms that this principle takes are well known. In infancy there is the example of prolonged thumb-sucking, which results from too little contact and inter-action with the mother. As we grow older we can indulge in occupational eating, nibbling aimlessly away at chocolates and biscuits to pass the time, and getting fatter and fatter as a result, like the zoo bears. Or we can groom ourselves into trouble, like the cockatoo. For us it will probably take the form of nail-biting or scab-picking. Occupational drinking, if the drinks are long and sweet, can lead again to fatness; if short and alcoholic they can lead to addiction and possibly liver damage. Smoking can be another time-killer and this, too, has its dangers.

  Clearly there are pitfalls if the Stimulus Struggle is tackled badly. The snag with these over-indulgence time-killers is that they are so limited that they make development impossible. All one can do with them is repeat diem over and over again, to stretch them out. To be effective in a major way they must be indulged in for long periods and that means trouble. Harmless enough in the ordinary course of events, as minor time-killers, they become damaging when carried to excess.

  3. If stimulation is too weak, you may increase your behaviour output by inventing novel activities.

  This is the creativity principle. If familiar patterns are too dull, the intelligent zoo animal must invent new ones. Captive chimpanzees, for instance, will contrive to introduce novelty into their environment by exploring the possibilities of new forms of locomotion, rolling over and over, dragging their feet along, and performing a variety of gymnastic patterns. If they can find a small piece of string, they will thread it through the cage roof, hang on to both ends with their teeth or their hands and spin round in the air, suspended like circus acrobats.

  Many zoo animals use visitors to relieve the boredom. If they ignore the people who walk by their cages they are liable to be ignored in return, but if they stimulate them in some way, then the visitors will stimulate them back. It is surprising what you can get zoo visitors to do, if you are an ingenious zoo animal. If you are a chimpanzee or an orangutan and you spit at them, they scream and rush wildly about. It helps to pass the day. If you are an elephant, you can flick spittle at them with the tip of your trunk. If you are a walrus, you can splash water over them with your flipper. If you are a magpie or a parrot, you can entice them with ruffled head feathers to preen you and then nip their fingers with your beak.

  One particular male lion perfected his audience-manipulation in a remarkable way. His usual method of urination (as with tom-cats) was to squirt a jet of urine horizontally backwards at a vertical landmark, depositing his personal scent upon it. When he did this against one of the vertical bars of his cage-front he found that the spray reached his visitors and created an interesting reaction. They leapt back, shouting. As time passed, he not only improved his aim, but also added a new trick. After the first spraying, when the front row of his audience had retreated, the second row quickly took its place to get a better look. Instead of loosing his jet in one stream, he saved some of it for a second spraying and in this way managed to excite the new front row as well.

  Food-begging (as distinct from food-nibbling) is a less drastic measure, but equally rewarding, and is practised by a wide variety of species. All that is necessary is to invent some peculiar action or posture that appeals to the passers-by and makes them believe that you are hungry. Monkeys and apes find that an out-stretched palm is adequate, but bears have proved more inventive. Each has its own speciality: one will stand on its hind legs and wave a paw; another will sit on its rump in a curved posture, clasping its hind paws with its front feet; another will sit up and hook one of its front paws on to the lower jaw of its open mouth; another will stand up and nod or make come-hither movements with its head. It is amazing how easy it is to train zoo visitors to react to these displays if you are an intelligent zoo bear. The trouble is that in order to keep the visitors’ interest, you have to reward them every so often by eating the objects they throw at you. If you fail to comply, they soon move away and the exciting stimulation of the social interaction you have invented is lost. The result of this we have already observed: you have to switch to the less satisfactory ‘over-indulgence principle’ and you get fat and sick.

  The essential point about these zoo gymnastics and begging routines is that the motor patterns involved are not found in nature. They are inventions geared to the special conditions of captivity.

  In the human zoo this creativity principle is carried to impressive extremes. I have already pointed out that disillusionment can set in when the survival-substitute activities of the Stimulus Struggle begin to seem pointless, often because the activities chosen are rather limited in their scope. In avoiding these limitations, men have sought for more and more complex forms of expression, forms which become so absorbing that they carry the individual on to such high planes of experience that the rewards are endless. Here we move from the realms of occupational trivia to the exciting worlds of the fine arts, philosophy and the pure sciences. These have the great value that they not only effectively combat under-stimulation, but also at the same time make maximum use of man’s most spectacular physical property — his gigantic brain.

  Because of the vast importance these activities have assumed in our civilizations, we tend to forget that they are in a sense no more than devices of the Stimulus Struggle. Like hide-and-seek or chess, they help to pass the time between the cradle and the grave, for those who are lucky enough not to be totally bound up in the struggle for crude survival. I say lucky, because, as I mentioned earlier, the great advantage of the super-tribal condition is that we are comparatively free to choose the forms that our activities take, and when the human brain can devise such beautiful pursuits as these, we must count ourselves fortunate to be amongst the Stimulus Strugglers, rather than the strugglers for survival. This is man the inventor playing for all he is worth. When we study the researches of science, listen to symphonies, read poetry, watch ballets, or look at paintings, we can only marvel at the lengths to which mankind has pushed the Stimulus Struggle and the incredible sensitivity with which he has tackled it.

  4. If stimulation is too weak, you may increase your behaviour output by performing normal responses to sub-normal stimuli.

  This is the overflow principle. If the internal urge to perform some activity becomes too great
, it can ‘overflow’ in the absence of the external objects that normally provoke it.

  Objects which in the wild state would never rate a reaction are given the full treatment in the bleak zoo environment. With monkeys this may take the form of coprophagy: if there is no food to chew, then faeces will do. If there is no territory to patrol, then stunted cage-pacing will do. The animal ambles back and forth, back and forth, until it has worn a track by its rhythmic, sterile pacing. Again, it is better than nothing.

  In the absence of a suitable mate, a zoo animal may attempt to copulate with virtually anything that is available. A solitary hyena, for example, managed to mate with its circular food-dish, tipping it up on its side and rolling it back and forth beneath its body so that it pressed rhythmically against its penis. A male raccoon living alone used its bed as a mate. It could be seen to gather up a tight bundle of straw, clasp it beneath its body and then make pelvic thrusts into it. Sometimes, when an animal is kept with another of a different species, the alien companion can be used as a mate substitute. A male brush-tailed porcupine living with a tree-porcupine repeatedly tried to mount it. The two species are not closely related and the arrangement of the spines differs markedly, with the result that it was an extremely painful affair for the frustrated male. In another cage a little squirrel monkey was housed with a large kangaroo-shaped rodent called a springhaas, which was about ten times its size. Undaunted, the diminutive monkey used to leap on to the sleeping rodent’s back and attempt to copulate. The result of its desperate frustrations were reported in the local press, but totally misunderstood. It was recorded as having indulged in a charming game, ‘riding on the big animal’s back like a little furry jockey’.