The Naked Ape

By Desmond Morris

1967

THE NAKED APE by Desmond Morris A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with Jonathan Cape Ltd.

PRINTING HISTORY

Jonathan Cape edition published October 1967

Serialized in THE SUNDAY MIRROR October 1967

Literary Guild edition published April 1969

Transworld Publishers edition published May 1969

Bantam edition published January 1969

2nd printing …… January 1969

3rd printing ……. January 1969

4th printing ……. February 1969

5th printing ……. June1969

6th printing ……. August 1969

7th printing ……. October 1969

8th printing ……. October 1970

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1967 by Desmond Morris.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by monograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 30 Bedford Square, London, England.

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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 indirectly, 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, Professor Niko Tinbergen, Mr Ronald Webster, Dr Wolfgang Wickler, and Professor John i’udkin.

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.

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.

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 early 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 matter than the members of advanced civilisations. 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 whom 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.”)

The approach I propose to use in this book draws its material from three main sources: (1) the information about our past as unearthed by palaeontologists and based on the fossil and other remains of our ancient ancestors; (2) the information available from the animal behaviour studies of the comparative ethologists, based on detailed observations of a wide range of animal species, especially our closest living relatives, the monkeys and apes; and (3) the information that can be assembled by simple, direct observation of the most basic and widely shared behaviour patterns of the successful mainstream specimens from the major contemporary cultures of the naked ape itself.

Because of the size of the task, it will be necessary to oversimplify in some manner. The way I shall do this is largely to ignore the detailed ramifications of technology and verbalisation, and concentrate instead on those aspects of our lives that have obvious counterparts in other species: such activities as feeding, grooming, sleeping, fighting, mating and care of the young. When faced with these fundamental problems, how does the naked ape react? How do his reactions compare with those of other monkeys and apes? In which particular respect is he unique, and how do his oddities relate to his special evolutionary story?

In dealing with these problems I realise that I shall run the risk of offending a number of people. There are some who will prefer not to contemplate their animal selves. They may consider that I have degraded our species by discussing it in crude animal terms. I can only assure them that this is not my intention. There are others who will resent any zoological invasion of their specialist arena. But I believe that this approach can be of great value and that, whatever its shortcomings, it will throw new (and in some ways unexpected) light on the complex nature of our extraordinary species.

THERE is a label on a cage at a certain zoo that states simply, ‘This animal is new to science’. Inside the cage there sits a small squirrel. It has black feet and it comes from Africa. No black-footed squirrel has ever been found in that continent before. Nothing is known about it. It has no name.

For the zoologist it presents an immediate challenge. What is it about its way of life that has made it unique? How does it differ from the three hundred and sixty-six other living species of squirrels already known and described? Somehow, at some point in the evolution of the squirrel family, the ancestors of this animal must have split off from the rest and established themselves as an independent breeding population. What was it in the environment that made possible their isolation as a new form of life? The new trend must have started out in a small way, with a group of squirrels in one area becoming slightly changed and better adapted to the particular conditions there. But at this stage they would still be able to inter-breed with their relatives nearby. The new form would, be at slight advantage in its special region, but it would be no more than a race of the basic species and could be stamped out, re-absorbed into the mainstream at any point. If, as time passed, the new squirrels became more and more perfectly tuned-in to their particular environment, the moment would eventually arrive when it would be advantageous for them to become isolated from possible contamination by their neighbours. At this stage their social and sexual behaviour would undergo special modifications, making inter-breeding with other kinds of squirrels unlikely and eventually impossible. At first, their anatomy may have changed and become better at coping with the special food of the district, but later their mating calls and displays would also differ, ensuring that they attract only mates of the new type. At last, a new species would have evolved, separate and discrete, a unique form of life, a three hundred and sixty-seventh kind of squirrel.

When we look at our unidentified squirrel in its zoo cage, we can only guess about these things. All we can be certain about is that the markings of its fur—its black feet indicate that it is a new form. But these are only the symptoms, the rash that gives a doctor a clue about his patient’s disease. To really understand this new species, we must use these clues only as a starting point, telling us there is something worth pursuing. We might try to guess at the animal’s history, but that would be presumptuous and dangerous. Instead we will start humbly by giving it a simple and obvious label: we will call it the African black footed squirrel. Now we must observe and record every aspect of its behaviour and structure and see how it differs from, or is similar to, other squirrels. Then, little by little, we can piece together its story.

The great advantage we have when studying such animals is that we ourselves are not black-footed squirrels—a fact which forces us into an attitude of humility that is becoming to proper scientific investigation. How different things are, how depressingly different, when we attempt to study the human animal. Even for the zoologist, who is used to calling an animal an animal, it is difficult to avoid the arrogance of subjective involvement. We can try to overcome this to some extent by deliberately and rather coyly approaching the human being as if he were another species, a strange form of life on the dissecting table, awaiting analysis. How can we begin?