Desmond Morris - The Naked Ape: A Zoologists Study of the Human Animal

Strip a Man of His Clothes and Conventions and What Do You Find?

If one took a group of twenty suburban families and placed them in a primitive sub-tropical environment where the males had to go off hunting for food, the sexual structure of this new tribe would require little or no modification. In fact, what has happened in every large town or city is that the individuals it contains have specialized their hunting (working) techniques, but have retained their socio-sexual system in more or less its original form.... Only in the field of general breeding information are we now coming face to face with the first major assault on our age-old sexual system by the forces of modern civilization. Thanks to medical science, surgery and hygiene, we have reached an incredible peak of breeding success. We have practised death control and now we must balance it with birth control. It looks very much as though, during the next century or so, we are going to change our sexual ways at last. But if we do, it will not be because they failed, but because they succeeded too well.

from The Naked Ape

This is not only a thoughtful and stimulating book, but also an extremely interesting one.

The Times (of London) Literary Supplement

A Delta Book

Published by

Dell Publishing

a division of

Random House, Inc.

1540 Broadway

New York, New York 10036

Copyright 1967 by Desmond Morris

AU rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, unthout the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: McGraw-Hill, New York, New York.

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ISBN: 0-385-33430-3

Reprinted by arrangement with McGraw-Hill

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada April 1999

Preface to the new edition of The Naked Ape, 1983

This book was written in November 1966 in four explosive, exhausting weeks. I can still recall the surprise I felt when I discovered that the palms of my hands were sweating as I typed. There was a manic intensity about those four weeks which at the time I could not explain. Looking back, it is easier to understand.

The writing of The Naked Ape was a short, sharp climax to a long gestation period. As a child I had always been surrounded by animals of many kindsfoxes, crows, rabbits, lizards, parrots, snakes, toads, shrews, newts, voles, hedgehogsthe list was endless. I kept them, watched them, studied them and bred them. I enjoyed their company more than that of other members of my own species.

Later, as a young professional zoologist, I started a major investigation into the behaviour of fish, following that a few years later by another long study of bird behaviour. Moving to the Zoological Society of London, I became Curator of Mammals and concentrated my researches on a wide variety of mammalian species, culminating with detailed studies of monkeys and apes, especially chimpanzees. It was as if I was unconsciously working my way up the family tree towards my own kind, approaching the human species, as it were, from below.

The childhood shyness that had driven me so much into the company of other animals was gone. I was now at home with humans, but having approached them in this roundabout way meant that I saw them in a rather unusual light. I viewed my fellow-man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen apea naked ape of remarkable resilience, energy and imagination, but an animal for all that. Just another species for me to examine.

I knew that many people resented being called animals, as though this was in some way disgustingan insult to human dignity. Since I had always loved animals I found this rather depressing. It meant that such people had a low opinion of the other members of the animal kingdom. For me, it was just the reverse. Before I wrote The Naked Ape, I had preferred to study other, more beautiful and more fascinating species. Now, at last, I was prepared to elevate the human species to the level of one of my beloved animal forms.

Of course, I guessed that I might shock some of the more starry-eyed escapistspeople who were still gullible enough to believe the old fairy-tales designed to keep superstitious medieval peasants in their placeand I also suspected that the deliberate frankness of some of my statements might prove distasteful to the more sheltered puritans. But I was in no mood to compromise or to soften my message. I wanted to tell the truth as I saw it, bluntly and straightforwardly, with all the usual waffling, side-stepping and philosophical smoke-screening swept away. The ape was naked, not merely because he had lost his thick coat of fur during the course of evolution, but also because I intended to strip him bare on the pages of my book and show him as he really isa remarkable, ingenious, brilliant animal. No less and no more.

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book is intended for a general audience and authorities have therefore not been quoted in the text. To do so would have broken the flow of words and is a practice suitable only for a more technical work. But many brilliantly original papers and books have been referred to during the assembly of this volume and it would be wrong to present it without acknowledging their valuable assistance. At the end of the book I have included a chapter-by-chapter appendix relating the topics discussed to the major authorities concerned. This appendix is then followed by a selected bibliography giving the detailed references.

I would also like to express my debt and my gratitude to the many colleagues and friends who have helped me, directly and indirecdy, in discussions, correspondence and many other ways. They include, in particular, the following: Dr Anthony Ambrose, Mr David Attenborough, Dr David Blest, Dr N. G. Blurton-Jones, Dr John Bowlby, Dr Hilda Bruce, Dr Richard Coss, Dr Richard Davenport, Dr Alisdair Fraser, Professor J. H. Fremlin, Professor Robin Fox, Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, Dr Fae Hall, Professor Sir Alister Hardy, Professor Harry Harlow, Mrs Mary Haynes, Dr Jan van Hooff, Sir Julian Huxley, Miss Devra Kleiman, Dr Paul Leyhausen, Dr Lewis Lipsitt, Mrs Caroline Loizos, Professor Konrad Lorenz, Dr Malcolm Lyall-Watson, Dr Gilbert Manley, Dr Isaac Marks, Mr Tom Maschler, Dr L. Harrison Matthews, Mrs Ramona Morris, Dr John Napier, Mrs Caroline Nicolson, Dr Kenneth Oakley, Dr Frances Reynolds, Dr Vernon Reynolds, The Hon. Miriam Rothschild, Mrs Claire Russell, Dr W. M. S. Russell, Dr George Schaller, Dr John Sparks, Dr Lionel Tiger, Pofessor Niko Tinbergen, Mr Ronald Webster, Dr Wolfgang Wickler, and Professor John Yudkin.

I hasten to add that the inclusion of a name in this list does not imply that the person concerned necessarily agrees with my views as expressed here in this book.

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, over-crowded ape, and it is high time we examined his basic behaviour.