The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris



First published in 1964, the book seems to be full of information. If I want to put some of the useful parts of the book in here, I will have to put the whole book here. God!! I dont know how many years of observation leads one to such insights. Ofcourse a lot of it is kinda armchair theorisin after making a lot of observations, but whatever he writes seems so true. And also consisten with the findings of greats of other disciplines such as that if Dr. Eric Berne etc.



First of all, why 'Naked Ape', becos if one took common sense approach of a biologist, who normally starts by naming a species of black footed squirrel found in Africa as African Black Footed Squirrel, the one would name Homo Sapiens Naked Ape bcos undoubtedly they are apes and also naked bcos they are hair less.



Around 15m years back, when the forests were getting reduced, some of the apes cames out of forests into open. Till now they were dependent on trees for food but now the became carnivore too. They had to compete with carnivores in the new surrounding for the prey and from here came some changes thru which we humans became what we are- bilogically and culturally. But this happened so fast that we didnt have time to shed vegetarian ape's habits, and so we now have both the traits, that of hunting carnivores and that of a vegetarian ape.



The exodus from the forests brought abt following changes-

1. Standing vertical
2. Hunting for prey. Which entails collective effort of hunting packs and not the intra group rivlry of vegetarian apes.
3. They became territorial as all hunting animals are, as opposed to wandering apes.
4. Neoteny (prolongiong some of the infantile characteristics till adult age, in fact we became infantile apes. so that the brain can take time to grow enuf (bioogical developement of the kid) and the kid can learn by mitation and teachings.
5. And till that time one of the parents, mother, had to stay with the kid at home.
6. For the successful cooperation among the hunting group members, they had to be sure that while they are away hunting, someone else wont take away all the loot of the females. and so came the male-female pair bonding mechanism, a cultural way to ensure hunting group harmony. also like all the species, where child rearing is massive project, both parents started taking care of the tasks. only in our case the pair bonding was permanent.

In the first chapter Origins, Morris explains these changes and the way this would have resulted in getting the species Naked. In the subsequest chapters- Sex, Feeding, Rearing, Exploration, Fighting, Feeding, Comfort, Animals,- he shows how these changes have formed our habits and traits in these areas.