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Human behavior is animal behavior, says Dr. Desmond Morris. Every behavior -- anger, attack, protection -- can be found in the jungle. His groundbreaking book, The Naked Ape, the first in a trilogy on human behavior, has just been translated into Chinese, and its insights into the bloodline between man and animal are as relevant today as they were when it was first published in 1967.
"There are 193 species of monkeys and apes, 192 of which are covered with hair. The sole exception is a naked ape that calls itself Homo sapiens," said Desmond Morris in his controversial 1967 bestseller, The Naked Ape.
That radical premise unleashed a furor of a similar magnitude to the one Charles Darwin created when he suggested that man had evolved from the ape, turning the book into a 12-million copy bestseller and making a star of the mild-mannered zoologist who authored it. Now, about 36 years after it shook up readers in the West, the groundbreaking classic has been translated into Chinese (Wenhui Publishing House, three books in a series, 16 yuan each).
On a recent visit to Shanghai, Morris, now 75, discussed his life's work and his favorite subject -- observing "the human animal."
The idea that all men are essentially animals is topical in the current political climate, says Morris, noting that "one of the problems we have today is that people have started to think that cultures are different." Although the book coined a new term for the English language and was translated into 23 languages, Morris, an Oxford University zoologist, recalls that it was initially viewed as a bad joke in appalling taste.
"I had published studies of a wide variety of other creatures which had been read by a handful of specialists and caused little or no controversy," says the affable scientist, writer and artist. "But when I turned to writing books of bare-skinned primates, everything changed. I had assumed that most people were ready to face the fact that we are an integral part of primate evolution. But I found myself fighting a rearguard action for Charles Darwin. In some parts of the world The Naked Ape was banned and illicit copies were confiscated and burned by the Church. But things have softened a little bit now."
The highly acclaimed BBC television series "The Human Animal" has been a testimony to the enduring appeal of Morris' original view that human beings can justifiably be regarded and studied as just one of the many animal species.
"The Naked Ape was written with the belief that precisely by applying these methods to human behavior, we could gain some interesting insights into ourselves," Morris asserts.
Inspired by this new mythology, Morris followed The Naked Ape with Human Zoo, which focuses on human behavior in cities -- which, says Morris, should not be called "concrete jungles." In their natural habitants, he explains, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, or commit murder. Among the inhabitants of the concrete jungle, however, all of these behaviors occur. Man is trapped by his own brainy brilliance in a huge, restless menagerie where he is in perpetual danger of cracking under the strain.
"Human beings have evolved over a million years living in groups of only 80 or 100 people. That's the natural size of a human community. But here in Shanghai, you have 16 million people living together," he says. "Human Zoo concerns itself with how we survive in the big city."
Morris' final book in the trilogy is Intimate Behavior, which addresses personal relationships within the city.
Considering humans as animals and observing them as such came to Morris when he was the victim of his own, human limits.
"I was 38, and really pushing myself at the time, almost doing six jobs: radio, TV, writing books, curatorship, lecture and research," he recalls. "Basically, I worked too hard and finally cracked. That was the wake-up call: I realized that I was not a machine. I simply couldn't push myself so hard. I started to think really hard about my limitations, which led to my thinking of human beings as animals. It was then that I started writing The Naked Ape, and finished it in four weeks."
And if that writing came easily -- Morris is an unusually engaging, fluent writer -- it is because writing is in his blood. His father, Harry Morris, was an author of children's fiction, and his great-grandfather, William Morris, founded Britain's first penny paper, the Swindon Advertiser (now the Evening Advertiser) in 1854.
His great-grandfather was an important influence on Desmond's life. The family moved to Swindon when Desmond was 5 years old, and he inherited from his great grandfather not only a microscope and strange scientific specimens he found in the family attic, but also the curiosity of a naturalist.
As a schoolboy, Desmond spent days observing the wildlife in and around the lake at Queen's Park, which was then owned by his grandmother. He became a student of zoology at Birmingham University, and then was offered a research post at Oxford.
As one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, Morris has appeared in 500 episodes of nature programs like "Zootime" for Granada and 100 episodes of "Life in the Animal World" programs for the BBC.
But the man who made his name writing about naked apes confesses that he thinks of himself as neither zoologist nor writer: "I think of myself as a (surrealist) painter," he confesses. "I am devoted to it. But nobody buys my paintings simply because I refuse to change my painting style. So I make a living by studying zoology," says Desmond, one of the world's most famous zoologists, almost apologetically.
Morris is self-deprecating about his art, but he is nevertheless recognized as a noted modern artist: In 1950, he exhibited jointly with the renowned Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro, and has exhibited around the world.
Morris may not have been willing to risk becoming a full-time artist, but even his work in human behavior requires an appetite for risk: He has been threatened by the mafia when filming a body language feature on the streets of Italy and "nearly got into very serious travel" when filming witch-doctors in African countries.
But does it, he says, because observing human behavior gives one a great deal of insight into human problems -- and ultimately, their solutions.
At 75, Morris shows no signs of slowing down. He spends most of our conversation relating anecdotes from his travels around the world -- China is the 93rd countries he's been to.
In fact, travel is the latest field to benefit from his behavioral analysis. His 53rd book is The Naked Eye: Travels in Search of the Human Species, and is filled with travel monologues and autobiographical and natural history essays.
(eastday.com March 17, 2003)
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