The Naked Ape

by Desmond Morris

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Desmond Morris

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Introduction

  1. Origins

  2. Sex

  3. Rearing

  4. Exploration

  5. Fighting

  6. Feeding

  7. Comfort

  8. Animals

  Chapter References

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A BOOK NO HUMAN ANIMAL DARE MISS READING

  Here is the Naked Ape at his most primal – in love, at work, at war. Meet man as he really is: relative to the apes, stripped of his veneer as we see him courting, making love, sleeping, socialising, grooming, playing. Zoologist Desmond Morris’s classic takes its place alongside Darwin’s Origin of the Species, presenting man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless, in danger of forgetting his origins.

  With its penetrating insights on man’s beginnings, sex life, habits and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom, The Naked Ape is a landmark, at once provocative, compelling and timeless.

  About the Author

  Desmond Morris was born in Wiltshire in 1928. After gaining a degree in zoology from Birmingham University, he obtained his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He became curator of mammals at London Zoo in 1959, a post he held for eight years. He was already the author of some fifty scientific papers and seven books before completing The Naked Ape in 1967, which was to sell over 10 million copies throughout the world and be translated into almost every known language. He has made many television programmes and films on human and animal behaviour; his friendly and accessible approach making him popular with both adults and children, and he is now one of the best-known presenters of natural history programmes. He is also an accomplished artist.

  ALSO BY DESMOND MORRIS

  The Biology of Art

  The Mammals: A Guide to the Living Species

  Men and Snakes (co-author)

  Men and Apes (co-author)

  Men and Pandas (co-author)

  Zootime

  Primate Ethology (editor)

  The Human Zoo

  Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour

  Intimate Behaviour

  Manwatching: A Field-Guide to Human Behaviour

  Gestures: Their Origins and Distributions (co-author)

  Animal Days (autobiography)

  The Soccer Tribe

  The Giant Panda (co-author)

  Inrock (fiction)

  The Book of Ages

  The Art of Ancient Cyprus

  Bodywatching: A Field Guide to the Human Species

  Catwatching

  Dogwatching

  The Secret Surrealist

  Catlore

  The Human Nestbuilders

  Horsewatching

  The Animal Contract

  Animalwatching: A Field-Guide to Animal Behaviour

  Babywatching

  Christmas Watching

  The World of Animals

  The Naked Ape Trilogy

  The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species

  Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures

  Catworld: A Feline Encyclopaedia

  The Human Sexes: A Natural History of Man and Woman

  Cool Cats: The 100 Cat Breeds of the World

  Body Guards: Protective Amulets and Charms

  The Naked Ape and Cosmetic Behaviour

  (co-author) (in Japanese)

  The Naked Eye (autobiography)

  Dogs: A Dictionary of Dog Breeds

  Peoplewatching

  The Silent Language (in Italian)

  The Nature of Happiness (in Italian)

  The Naked Woman

  The Naked Ape

  A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal

  Desmond Morris

  INTRODUCTION

  The Naked Ape was first published in 1967. Everything I wrote in it seemed obvious enough to me, but it shocked many people.

  They were upset for several reasons. The main objection was that I had written about human beings as though they were just another animal species to study. As a zoologist I had already spent twenty years examining the behaviour of a wide variety of creatures, from fish to reptiles and from birds to mammals. My scientific papers on subjects ranging from the courtship behaviour of fish to the pairing of birds, to the food-hoarding of mammals, had been read by a handful of specialists and had caused little or no controversy. When I turned to writing books for a more general audience, about animals such as snakes, apes and pandas, there was again no great fuss. They were read and accepted by a small audience of interested parties. But then, when I produced a similar study of an unusual, naked-skinned primate, everything changed.

  Suddenly, every word I had written became the subject of heated debate. The human animal, I discovered, was still finding it hard to come to terms with its biological nature.

  I must confess I was surprised to find myself fighting a rearguard action for Charles Darwin. After a century of scientific progress and the discovery of more and more fossils of human ancestors, I had assumed that most people were ready to face the fact that we are an integral part of primate evolution. I thought they were ready to take a close look at their animal qualities and to learn from them. That was the aim of my book, but it soon became clear that I had a greater struggle on my hands.

  In some parts of the world The Naked Ape was banned and illicit copies were confiscated and burned by the Church, or the idea of human evolution was ridiculed and the book was viewed as a bad joke in appalling taste. I was deluged with religious tracts to encourage me to mend my ways.

  The Chicago Tribune pulped an entire issue of its magazine because its owners were offended by a review of the book that appeared on its pages. Why were they so offended? Because the review in question included the word ‘penis’.

  Sexual honesty, it seemed, was another of the faults to be found in the book. The same newspaper included endless reports of violence and murder. The word ‘gun’ appeared frequently. As I pointed out at the time, it was strange that they were prepared to mention something that shot death, but not something that shot life. But logic had no place here. By exchanging my fish and birds for men and women, I had uncovered a sleeping giant of human prejudice.

  In addition to breaking religious and sexual taboos, I was also accused of ‘making man beastly’ by insisting that the human species is driven by powerful inborn urges. This flew in the face of a great deal of fashionable psychological theorizing suggesting that everything we do is determined by learning and conditioning.

  It was claimed that I was putting forward the dangerous idea that mankind was trapped by brutish animal instincts from which there was no escape. This was another misreading of what I had written. There was no good reason why my suggestion of inborn ‘animal impulses’ should make man brutish in the derogatory sense that was implied. A brief glance at the various chapters of the book reveals that the inborn patterns I referred to include such features as the powerful urge to form loving pair-bonds, to care for our children, to seek a varied diet, to keep ourselves clean, to settle disputes by display and ritual rather than by bloodshed and, above all, to exhibit playfulness, curiosity and inventiveness. These are our main ‘animal urges’ and to say that they make us bestial or brutish is wilfully to misrepresent the zoological way of looking at human behaviour.

  There was, in addition, a political misunderstanding. It was assumed, again wrongly, that I was portraying the human species as condemned to some primeval st
atus quo. The extremes of the political spectrum viewed this as outrageous. To them, the human animal must be completely pliable, able to adapt to any regime imposed upon it. The idea that, beneath the skin, all humans may be guided by a set of genetic suggestions, inherited from their parents, is repulsive to political tyrants. It means that these leaders will always encounter a deep-seated resistance to their extreme social ideas. And that, as history teaches us, is what has happened time and again. Tyrannies may come, but they also go. Friendly, co-operative human nature eventually reasserts itself.

  Finally, there were those who felt that to call human beings ‘Naked Apes’ was insulting and pessimistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I used the title simply to emphasize that I was attempting a zoological portrait of our species. Viewed alongside other primates, ‘The Naked Ape’ is a valid description. To say it is insulting is to insult animals. To say it is pessimistic is to fail to marvel at the extraordinary success story of a modestly designed mammal.

  When an illustrated edition of The Naked Ape was published in 1986 I was asked to update the text. There was only one alteration I felt the need to make. I had to change a 3 to a 4. In 1967, when the book first appeared, the world population of human beings had stood at 3,000 million. In the intervening years it had risen to 4,000 million. Writing now, in 1994, it has risen yet again to well over 5,000 million. By the year 2000 it will be 6,000 million.

  The effects on human life of this massive increase in numbers concerned me. During the millions of years of our evolution we had been thin on the ground, living in small tribes. That tribal life moulded us, but it has left us unequipped for modern urban life. How does the Tribal Ape manage to cope as a City Ape?

  This question became the subject of the sequel to The Naked Ape. I had often heard it said that ‘the city is a concrete jungle’, but I knew this to be false. I had studied jungles and they were not like cities. They were not overcrowded. They were organic and changed only very slowly. Cities blossomed almost overnight. In biological terms, Rome was built in a day.

  When, as a zoologist, I studied the behaviour of city-dwellers, they did remind me of something. Living in their cramped quarters they reminded me not of jungle wildlife, but of captive zoo animals. The city, I decided, was not a concrete jungle, it was a human zoo, and this became the title of my second volume in the Naked Ape trilogy.

  In The Human Zoo I looked closer at the aggressive, sexual and parental behaviour of our species, as it manifested itself under the stresses and pressures of urban living. What happens when the tribe becomes a super-tribe? What happens when status becomes super-status? How does our family-based sexuality survive when each individual is surrounded by thousands of strangers?

  Why, if cities are so stressful, do people flock to them? The answer to this last question adds a pleasant element to a sometimes depressing picture. For the city, despite all its faults, acts as a giant stimulus-centre where our great inventiveness can flourish and develop.

  To complete the trilogy, in a volume entitled Intimate Behaviour, I addressed the subject of what has happened to our personal relations within this new environment. How has our intensely sexual and loving nature reacted to modern life? In our intimate relations, how much has been lost and how much has been gained?

  In many ways, we have remained remarkably faithful to our biological origins. Our genetic programming has proved flexible, but is nevertheless resistant to major changes. Where straightforward loving relations prove impossible for us, we employ our inventiveness to devise substitutes that will see us through. Our ingenuity as a species enables us to enjoy the technical comforts and excitements of modern living while at the same time managing to obey our primeval imperatives.

  This has been the secret of our extraordinary success and, if we are lucky, will enable us to continue to walk our increasingly hazardous evolutionary tightrope. Those who picture the future as a ruined, polluted landscape are misguided. They watch the newscasts, recoil at the worst we can do and extend that a thousand times to create their gloom-ridden scenario. They overlook two things. First, the news that is brought to us is nearly always bad news, but for every act of violence or destruction that occurs there are a million acts of peaceful friendliness. We are indeed an amazingly peaceful species, given our population levels, but our widespread peacefulness fails to make the headlines.

  Second, when visualizing the future, they usually overlook the possibility of revolutionary new inventions. Every generation has seen startling technical advances and there is no reason to suppose that these will suddenly stop. On the contrary, they will almost certainly increase dramatically. Nothing is impossible. If we can imagine it, sooner or later we will be able to do it. But even when we have made our mainframe computers look as primitive as clay tablets, we ourselves will still be no more than Naked Apes, made of flesh and blood. Even if, in our relentless quest for progress, we have destroyed all our close animal relatives, we will remain biological phenomena, subject to biological rules.

  With this in mind I am delighted that my Naked Ape trilogy, originally published between 1967 and 1971, is now reappearing. A quarter of a century later, the message remains the same – you are a member of the most extraordinary animal species that has ever lived. Understand your animal nature and accept it.

  DESMOND MORRIS

  Oxford, 1994

  INTRODUCTION

  There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He is proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis, preferring to accord this honour falsely to the mighty gorilla. He is an intensely vocal, acutely exploratory, overcrowded ape, and it is high time we examined his basic behaviour.

  I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the earthy old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment to him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most – and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be a far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would face up to this fact. Perhaps this is where the zoologist can help.

  One of the strangest features of previous studies of naked-ape behaviour is that they have nearly always avoided the obvious. The earlier anthropologists rushed off to all kinds of unlikely corners of the world in order to unravel the basic truth about our nature, scattering to remote cultural backwaters so atypical and unsuccessful that they are nearly extinct. They then returned with startling facts about the bizarre mating customs, strange kinship systems, or weird ritual procedures of these tribes, and used this material as though it were of central importance to the behaviour of our species as a whole. The work done by these investigators was, of course, extremely interesting and most valuable in showing us what can happen when a group of naked apes becomes side-tracked into a cultural blind alley. It revealed just how far from the normal our behaviour patterns can stray without a complete social collapse. What it did not tell us was anything about the typical behaviour of typical naked apes. This can only be done by examining the common behaviour patterns that are shared by all the ordinary, successful members of the major cultures – the mainstream specimens who together represent the vast majority. Biologically, this is the only sound approach. Against this, the old-style anthropologist would have argued that his technologically simple tribal groups are nearer the heart of the matte
r than the members of advanced civilizations. I submit that this is not so. The simple tribal groups that are living today are not primitive, they are stultified. Truly primitive tribes have not existed for thousands of years. The naked ape is essentially an exploratory species and any society that has failed to advance has in some sense failed, ‘gone wrong’. Something has happened to it to hold it back, something that is working against the natural tendencies of the species to explore and investigate the world around it. The characteristics that the earlier anthropologists studied in these tribes may well be the very features that have interfered with the progress of the groups concerned. It is therefore dangerous to use this information as the basis for any general scheme of our behaviour as a species.

  Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, by contrast, have stayed nearer home and have concentrated on clinical studies of mainstream specimens. Much of their earlier material, although not suffering from the weakness of the anthropological information, also has an unfortunate bias. The individuals on which they have based their pronouncements are, despite their mainstream background, inevitably aberrant or failed specimens in some respect. If they were healthy, successful and therefore typical individuals, they would not have had to seek psychiatric aid and would not have contributed to the psychiatrists’ store of information. Again, I do not wish to belittle the value of this research. It has given us an immensely important insight into the way in which our behaviour patterns can break down. I simply feel that in attempting to discuss the fundamental biological nature of our species as a whole, it is unwise to place too great an emphasis on the earlier anthropological and psychiatric findings.

  (I should add that the situation in anthropology and psychiatry is changing rapidly. Many modern research workers in these fields are recognizing the limitations of the earlier investigations and are turning more and more to studies of typical, healthy individuals. As one investigator expressed it recently: ‘We have put the cart before the horse. We have tackled the abnormals and we are only now beginning, a little late in the day, to concentrate on the normals.’)