Lost Hair

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 4

Lost Hair

The Naked Ape. By Desmond Morris. Cape. 241 pp. Appendix: literature bibliography.

Dr Desmond Morris has an impressive background of authority on animal behaviour. In 1951 he joined Niko Tinbergen’s animal behaviour group at Oxford. In 1956 he moved to London as head of Granada television and film unit at the London Zoo. After three years making animal behaviour films and television programmes he became curator of mammals for the Zoological Society. All this research finally led to “The Naked Ape” which is a zoologist’s study of the human animal. Dr Morris contends that of the 192 other species of apes and monkeys, man predominates because of the nakedness of his skin. The hair we once had, he says, gradually disappeared when we gave up hunting and created a different social pattern. His theories are not necessarily his own for Dr Morris has consulted major authorities in many fields. On rearing of our young he says that the burden of parental care is heavier for the naked ape than any other living species. We have practised death control and now we must balance it with birth control—he poses the argument that the naked ape will have to change its sexual ways before long—not because they have failed, but because they have succeeded too well. On fighting, the author maintains that the naked ape has changed very little since bis early, primitive days. Even, our basic diet, he says, is much the same as our hunting ancestors. There are, perhaps, some alarming speculations and much that will stir controversy among some anthroplogists and psychologists, but everyone who reads the book will be stimulated and will receive food for thought for a long time to come. One of the questions in an oral general knowledge test given to a youth of 16 applying for a job with a Birmingham chemical firm was: “What do you know about chromosomes?” The answer came without hesitation: “He was on the telly in ’The Forsyte Saga.’ ”