Desmond Morris - Monkey

I recall with some embarrassment the day I walked into a shop and informed the startled young woman behind the counter that a monkey had bitten off my nipples. I asked her if she could supply me with replacements. Happily, she could and I was able to fit them back in place so that the jets from my cars windscreen washers would once again be aimed in the right direction.

For some reason, monkeys in drive-through wildlife parks love leaping on visitors cars and causing havoc. They pull and tug and bite at anything they can get their hands around or their teeth into. In my case, it was the rubber nipples that direct the jets of water at the glass when one presses the appropriate button inside the car. Being soft and removable, they are favourite targets for the packs of captive monkeys that are so popular today in modern safari parks. Baboons in particular are adept at leaning down, clamping their large teeth on the rubber and levering the nipple loose. They chew it and spit it out before moving on to some other form of vandalism. They have done it before, of course, and they know perfectly well that the object is inedible, but they still cant resist meddling with it.

This trivial activity somehow sums up the way most people see monkeys. They are essentially mischievous beings. Indeed, the dictionary defines monkeying with something as tampering with it, or playing mischievous or foolish tricks.

Monkeys in a drive-through wildlife park.

Viewed negatively, this quality of monkeys sees them as a destructive nuisance. Viewed more positively, however, it reveals them as playfully inquisitive. Herein lies their importance. For it is an undeniable fact that the most playful and inquisitive primate on the planet is the human animal. It is our playfulness, lasting well into adulthood, that has been the underlying feature of the human success story, rendering us the most powerful species on the planet. Without our playful curiosity and our endless inquisitiveness, we would never have become inventors, never have developed our amazing skills and our advanced technologies.

We are lucky that monkeys, rather than some other kind of mammals, are our remote ancestors. Because, over millions of years, we evolved from those scampering, chattering, intelligent, treetop-living creatures, we had a good starting point. Their inborn urge to explore things became the bedrock of our sophisticated innovations. Their love of activity became our industrious pursuit of knowledge.

We owe a great debt to our monkey ancestors. They set us on the right path, the path that would take us from the treetops to the moon and, one day, beyond. So they deserve a closer look.