Desmond Morris : Naked Ape Human Zoo Desmond Morris Naked Ape : Human Zoo Desmond Morris (Desmond John Morris) author of The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo was born in the village of Purton, near Swindon, Wiltshire, England on January 24th, 1928 as the son of an author of children's fiction and as the great-grandson of William Morris, the pioneering founder of the Swindon Advertiser - Britain's first penny paper - who was also a keen amateur naturalist. During his younger childhood Desmond Morris developed a strong interests in writing and in natural history. As a teenager his interest in natural history developed towards being an interest in Zoology whilst he also became more interested in art. In 1946 he was obliged to put in two years National Service as a military trainee but also functioned as a lecturer in Fine Arts at the Chisledon Army College. He developed sufficient expertise as an artist to warrant his holding a one-man exhibition in Swindon Library. In the autumn of 1948 he enrolled as an undergraduate at the Zoology Department of Birmingham University following his release from National Service.

During his undergraduate course he continued to be involved in painting and became involved in film-making as a writer and director. His paintings were exhibited in London and in Belgium. In 1951 he graduated from Birmingham with first class honours and moved to Oxford to persue doctoral studies in animal behavior. Here he was placed under the tutorship of Dr. Niko Tinbergen. In 1952 he married Ramona Baulch. His studies on the Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-spined Stickleback (a small freshwater fish) led to his being awarded a doctorate in 1954 and then to post-doctoral research at Oxford Oxford on the reproductive behaviour of birds. From 1956 he became seriously involved in the making of films and television programmes about animal behaviour and began studying the artistic abilities of apes. This was followed by the authorship of a number of natural history books and by the hosting of a popular TV program "Zootime" over several years. In 1959 he was appointed Curator of Mammals at London Zoo.

Between 1959 and 1967 he was responsible for the authorship of quite a few natural history books sometimes in co-authorship with his wife. In 1967 he became a rather more controversial figure in that his authorship strayed into rather more sensitive areas. He was editor of "Primate Ethology" a work which considered recent advances in the study of the behaviours of monkeys and apes, and was author of the international best-seller The Naked Ape which set out to be a frank study of human behavior from a Zoologist's perspective. The early and distinct signs of the financial success of this work which, at the last count, had been translated into 23 languages, selling upwards of 10 million copies, caused him to veer away from continuing in a recent appointment as executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and towards relocating to the island of Malta in order to continue to write and to paint. Amongst the many significant works that he wrote in these years are The Human Zoo (1969) and Intimate Behaviour (1971). In 1973 Desmond Morris returned to Oxford as a research fellow at Wolfson College.

In this role it was anticipated that he would work in association with Niko Tinbergen's research group in the Department of Zoology and would continue to research human action-patterns. Over the ensuing years he has maintained his many interests in animal behaviour research, the arts, and in making television programmes and films. The more significant publications in these more recent years include Manwatching, a Field-Guide to Human Behaviour (1977), an Illustrated Naked Ape (1986), Catwatching (1986), Dogwatching (1986), Babywatching (1991), The Human Animal (1994) and Peoplewatching (2002). Notably significant television and film productions in these years include The Human Race (1982), and The Animals Roadshow - a series which he co-presented with Sarah Kennedy and which proved to be widely popular over a three-year run after 1986. In overall terms Desmond Morris has been responsible for the authorship of almost fifty scientific publications.

ï¿½ Stephen Moss on Desmond Morris, the man who wrote the groundbreaking book The Naked Ape | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Desmond Morris is keen on the concept of playfulness, and thinks it tell us a lot about humanity's evolution. Our playfulness fuels our ingenuity and inventiveness, allowed us to defeat physically more powerful species to become global top dogs, and explains how we ended up wearing clothes, playing computer games, dropping "smart" bombs and watching Strictly Come Dancing. We play, therefore we are. You can't help thinking about Morris's playfulness theory when you meet him: a large, beaming, soon-to-be-80-year-old surrounded by books (many of which were written by him) and surrealist paintings (all of which were painted by him) in a converted coach house at the back of his rambling home in Oxford - the very house, he tells me at least twice, in which 19th-century lexicographer James Murray laboured for more than 30 years on the Oxford English Dictionary (he died having got to T).

We talk, meanderingly, for three hours; I'm knackered by the end, but Morris remains arm-wavingly irrepressible, and only stops because his wife is ill and rings from the house for a cuppa (we also seem to be ending at tea). Otherwise, I'd probably still be there. Morris has just produced The Naked Man, a companion book to The Naked Woman, which appeared in 2004, and the latest in an evolutionary line stretching back to his career-defining, life-changing, collective-mentality-altering The Naked Ape, an instant bestseller when it was published in 1967 and now heading for sales of 20m. He has made a career out of telling us that 10,000 years of "civilisation" cannot offset several million years of hunter-gathering, and that we now live a life that is, in many ways, at odds with our genetic inheritance. Morris's theories do not endear him to feminists. The phrase he uses most often to describe men is "risk-takers".

He says that for a million years or more men had to go out and face down woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, develop strategies to overcome them (cooperation to fight common foes, he emphasises, is genetically more important to man than the competitive urge), and "bring home the bacon - literally", while women cleaned the cave, raised the serial litter that is unique to the human species, and organised every other aspect of life. His view, anathema to many fellow scientists as well as to feminists, is that this genetic separation can't be wished away by equality legislation. "There was considerable specialisation for the male and the female," he says. "Men became more athletic and did the hunting; women did everything else. They were multitasking, to use a phrase that has become very popular, and were at the centre of society. It's not a question of superiority and inferiority. It's a question of differences, and these differences are very real." Men were expendable; women, because of their reproductive function, weren't.

"You couldn't afford to lose a woman," he says, "They were too valuable, so the males became the specialist hunters." For the whole of prehistory, this separation of roles worked well, Morris says - a perfect union designed to rear young and perpetuate the species. The problem came when we started to expand from our natural tribal groups of around 100 and develop big settlements. "For a million years, women were at the centre of society and men were on the periphery," says Morris. "I don't see why women get so upset about this: women ran society, men were in the hunting ground. The sad thing for women is that, over a period of time, the hunting grounds became the city centres, and so instead of being on the periphery, men were now in the centre of the cities running things. The cities were the hunting grounds, although now the hunting was metaphorical. Urbanisation favoured the male." Feminists could take this two ways. The upside is that Morris thinks women should run more or less everything. "We'd be much better off if women ran most of the organisations," he says. "If women ran the political world rather than men, for instance. I don't think men are suited to politics.

Women are much more suited because they are genetically more cautious and are not going to make stupid mistakes." The downside, feminism-wise, is that Morris thinks that men, because of their natural risk-taking, will always be better inventors and artists. "For every one great woman artist, there are 100 men," says Morris. "There are more male geniuses than female geniuses, and there are more male idiots than female idiots. If you're a human female, you can't afford to be a risk-taker and you can't afford to be a dimwit. You have to be in between those two extremes." Man's artistic dominance, he argues, cannot be explained by opportunity or social conditioning. Over the whole of evolution, women have produced more art than men - in the form of decorated pottery and clothing - but they have tended to produce traditional art. It is men who have flouted the rules and produced most of the great, mould-breaking art. Morris also has a theory about car crashes. "Women have more accidents but men have bigger accidents," he says. "If you're going to have a big car crash, it's always a man; if you're going to get a dented fender, it's a woman.

You hardly ever hear of a high-speed crash involving a woman; it's always a man." He expresses his theory forcefully, vividly; you sense, anecdotally, that there may be something in it; but you would also like to see the insurance stats to prove it. Morris paints with a very broad brush. The other area where Morris's new book has already proved controversial is his take on homosexuality. This is dealt with in the final chapter of the book and feels tacked on, as if the publisher insisted the subject be covered. Morris has borrowed a theory from his friend and fellow zoologist Clive Bromhall, who in his book The Eternal Child argued that a key feature of our evolutionary history has been the extension of childhood and the postponement of breeding. The social effect of that process has been that for 10 years, between the ages of about four and 14, boys and girls have tended to play together in separate groups. At puberty, the sexes - driven by the need to reproduce - come together, but for largely social reasons (these are left irritatingly vague) a small proportion of men and women continue to prefer their own sex.

Homosexuality is "genetically instigated but then environmentally influenced", he says. Gay men, he argues, are at the extreme end of the "playfulness" spectrum, and likely to be more creative than the average. One of the key features of humans, according to his overall theory, is that unlike other species we never lose the curiosity and inventiveness of youth. Homosexual people, he says, exhibit that "Peter Pan syndrome" to an extreme degree, giving them above-average intelligence, inventiveness and creativity. The theory, to my untutored ears, sounds tenuous, and for once Morris doesn't express it very fluently - he seems embarrassed to be relying on someone else's thinking. Morris, a genetically useful iconoclast and provocateur, prides himself on simplifying science for the general reader without distorting, but I wonder about the way these large hypotheses on homosexuality are skipped over in just seven pages of what is effectively a coda to the book. The Naked Man exemplifies the tensions - and the pleasures - in Morris's richly varied career.

The book is a long way from The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-Spined Stickleback, for which he was awarded his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He could have had a distinguished career as what might be called an institutionalised zoologist - and for much of his time he has had exactly that - but in the late 1950s he fell among that dangerous tribe of television people, joining Granada to make the programme Zoo Time, which taught him how to popularise without dumbing down too much, made him a name and led to him writing The Naked Ape, which treated humans as animals and sought to explain all human behaviour in zoological terms. Man was not a moral or a spiritual being; he was an animal, an ape with pretensions to be something greater. "I spent the first half of my life studying animal behaviour," says Morris, "and when I eventually wrote a book about human beings, I wrote about them as if I was writing about another animal species. I had met Tom Maschler, then a young publisher at Cape, at a party and told him I was going to write a zoology of human beings one day, and not even use the term human beings.

Instead I'd write it as if I was an alien who had come to this planet and seen this extraordinary ape which doesn't have any fur on its body. Tom loved the idea, but it took him three years to persuade me to write it, and when I eventually set to work I had to complete it in four weeks because I was so busy. I just sat down and wrote. It was written with such intensity that I can remember it to this day." It was a publishing sensation that caught a moment when everything was being rethought: while attractive to radicals, who wanted to strip away layers of political and religious authority and liked the notion of unfettered man, it infuriated feminists, who accused it of promoting a male-centred view of human evolution. It became a cause celebre - Maschler's instinct had been spot on - and made zoology part of the late-60s zeitgeist. The irony is that Morris was an accidental zoologist. His first love was art - he intended to be a surrealist painter - and he only applied to study zoology at Birmingham because he had a low opinion of art schools and felt a study of biomorphic shapes would be useful to his painting.

He exhibited in London with Joan Miro in 1950, but that was surrealism's last throw in the UK and he realised he would never make a living. He had, in any case, been bitten by the zoology bug at Birmingham and couldn't resist the lure of the ten-spined stickleback. Morris never stopped painting, though he didn't exhibit between 1952 and 1974, and his coach house is neatly divided into halves that sum up the two compartments of his life. "I have a library with all my scientific books and a room with my art books and my paintings," he says. "It's like two hemispheres of my brain." Who else, you wonder, could in the mid-1960s have gone from being head of mammals at London Zoo - the job he had been given after the success of Zoo Time - to director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts? "From rhinos to Picassos," as he sums up a wondrously odd move. He didn't stay at the ICA long.

The runaway success of The Naked Ape allowed him to run away - he says he knew it was a sensation when he heard Burt Lancaster had bought the film rights. He quit his job and, with his wife Ramona, went to live in Malta, where he started painting again in earnest, lived a life of sunny, self-conscious hedonism, and produced a son, Jason. Morris was almost 40 when he left for Malta - burned out, he says, after 15 years of frenetic activity. "A few months before I wrote The Naked Ape my health collapsed. When I recovered I said, 'Right, that's it,' and I cut out a lot of things. I realised that I had to cut down. I was trying to live like a machine when in fact I was just an animal. I focused all my efforts on one thing, which was The Naked Ape. I sat down and wrote it in the autumn of 1966. I hadn't any hopes for it; I didn't expect it to do anything. People say I must have known what I was doing.

They think I deliberately wrote it to make a shocking bestseller, but it wasn't like that." Intentional or not, that was what it became, and he was determined to enjoy the money and freedom it brought him. "I didn't intend to stay in Malta for very long, but it stretched for five or six years. I had a studio and painted. I wrote in the winter, painted in the summer. We had all our friends out to stay. My childlike curiosity, which I've maintained all my life, demands new experiences, and this was something I'd never experienced before. My mother was horrified. She said, 'Put the money in the bank,' as mothers do, but I said, 'No, I'm going to spend it all, and when it's all spent I'll come back to work, because I like work.' And that's what I did. I spent most of it, and then came back and started research again here at Oxford." In 1973 he returned to the UK with his family to take up a research fellowship at Wolfson College, seeking to combine hard science with populist books.

The Human Zoo and Intimate Behaviour, both written in Malta, were followed by Manwatching (which developed the concept of "body language"), The Soccer Tribe, Catwatching, Dogwatching and Babywatching. He resumed his TV career and travelled widely - a map of the world in the corridor that connects his art-world with his science-world is covered with pins marking the places he has visited. He has clearly had a ball, adores his wife of 55 years, remains fascinated by art and film, and has even come to quite like his fellow humans after early doubts. An intense only child, he had spent much of his adolescence watching his father die of wounds received in the first world war and, as a teenager confronted with the loss of his father and the start of a second global conflict, he took a dim view of his fellow naked apes, finding solace in art and the natural world. Regrets? "I should have stuck at the art," he says. "I think I had the potential to be a good artist. I still consider myself a serious artist but a very minor one, and I'm a minor artist because I've been doing too many other things.

My strength is that I do lots of different things; my weakness is that I don't stick at any of them long enough." Does he envy David Attenborough, who 50 years ago used to present Zoo Quest on the BBC while Morris did Zoo Time on ITV? His TV rival - and good friend - carried on making programmes and remains a vital presence on television, lauded for his commitment to quality broadcasting. "I'm not an envious person," says Morris. "It's one of my few good qualities. David has stuck to his guns, gone right the way through the whole animal kingdom, and made the best programmes about animals ever. They will be a lasting monument to him. David has his huge collection of natural history programmes which together make a brilliant study. I would have liked to have been somebody who had done a major study, but on the other hand I've had the pleasure of being like a child all my life and having new toys all the time." The perfect image of the playful, risk- taking male. Happiness may lie in having theories that match one's own personality. · The Naked Man is published by Jonathan Cape (£17.99) on January 3.

To order a copy for £16.99 with free UK p&p go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875. BBC ON THIS DAY | 12 | 1967: The Naked Ape steps out About This Site | Text Only 1967: The Naked Ape steps out Zoologist Dr Desmond Morris has stunned the world by writing about humans in the same way scientists describe animals. His new book, The Naked Ape, was published today. It was so named because out of the 193 species of monkeys and apes on the planet only man is not entirely covered in hair. The former curator of mammals at London Zoo who is best known for planning to bring together Chi Chi the panda with Moscow's An An panda bear says he wants to popularise and demystify science. The provocative book sheds new light on our own behaviour and society, describing our ways of "feeding, sleeping, fighting, mating and rearing young". He highlights some surprising facts that are raising quite a few eyebrows in the scientific and non-scientific world.

For example:- Homo sapiens not only has the biggest brain of all primates but also the largest penis, and is "the sexiest primate alive" our fleshy ear-lobes, unique to humans, are erogenous zones that have been known to provoke orgasm in both males and females, the more rounded shape of human breasts means they are primarily a sexual signalling device rather than simply a milk machine. The book has been serialised in the Daily Mirror - and with great success. It has already netted �80,000 in the USA and �70,000 in the UK and Europe. But critics of the book have labelled him "an inadequately informed amateur" who has oversimplified and distorted the way we behave by creating a zoological portrait of the human being. Tax exiles Dr Morris and his wife are now planning to leave Britain as tax exiles after learning that the Inland Revenue are to send him a bill of �180,000. He told the Daily Mail newspaper: "The speed and timing of all this has rather shattered me. I am now faced with the situation where I shall probably be turning to writing as my major activity.

"It is pretty definite that I shall go abroad although I have not finally worked out the details." DESMOND MORRIS - BIBLIOGRAPHY Organizes an exhibition of chimpanzee paintings and drawings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. 1958 Co-organizes 'The Lost Image' exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall, London, comparing pictures by apes, human infants and human adults. First scientific book published: 'The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-spined Stickleback'. (Brill, Leiden). Also, first children's book published: 'The Story of Congo'. (Batsford, London.) 1959 After acting as host for Granada TV's weekly 'Zootime' programme for three years, he leaves the TV and Film Unit at the London Zoo, to become the Zoological Society's Curator of Mammals. During the eight years he holds this post, he continues to present television programmes both for Granada and the BBC, scripting and hosting a total of approximately 500 'Zootime' programmes for Granada and 100 'Life in the Animal World' programmes for BBC2.

In addition, he takes part in many BBC radio programmes on natural history subjects and is a regular reviewer of animal books for the Times Literary Supplement. He also becomes co-editor of the International Zoo Yearbook for its first four volumes (1959-1962). 1961 Book published: 'Curious Creatures' (Spring Books, London). 1962 Book published: 'The Biology of Art' (Methuen, London), a study of the picturemaking behaviour of the great apes and its relationship to human art. Later editions appeared in The United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Denmark, Mexico, and Hungary. 1964 Children's book published: 'Apes and Monkeys' (Bodley Head, London). Later editions in The United States and Japan. 1965 Reference work published: 'The Mammals, a Guide to the Living Species' (Hodder and Stoughton, London). Also 'Men and Snakes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and France. Children's book published: 'The Big Cats' (Bodley Head, London).

Later editions in The United States, Japan and Holland. 1965 Reference work published: 'The Mammals, a Guide to the Living Species' (Hodder and Stoughton, London). Also 'Men and Snakes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and France. 1966 Book published 'Men and Apes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States, France, Germany, Japan and Portugal. Also published: 'Men and Pandas' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and Japan. During this period he establishes an informal research unit at the London Zoo comprising Ph.D. students undertaking doctoral work in animal behaviour and other visiting scientists. 1967 Editor: 'Primate Ethology' (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London), a collection of papers on recent advances in the study of monkeys and apes. Later editions appear in The United States and France. Also published: 'The Naked Ape' (Cape, London), a zoologist's study of the human animal.

This is the first of a number of books he produces on the subject of human behaviour. Later editions of The Naked Ape include: The United States, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, Finland, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Japan, Poland, Iceland, Slovak, Czech, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Sinhalese, and Malayalam. In the spring of this year, he resigns his curatorship at London Zoo and becomes the executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, with the initial task of seeing the ICA of its old home and into its new, enlarged premises in The Mall. 1968 Following the unexpected success of 'The Naked Ape', he leaves the ICA and moves with his wife to live in Malta where he can concentrate on writing a sequel and return to his own painting activities. He remains in Malta, writing and painting, for the next five years, with occasional visits to his old university at Oxford. Son Jason is born in Malta. 1969 Book published: 'The Human Zoo'(Cape, London), the sequel to 'The Naked Ape', in which he examines the behaviour of city-dwellers.

Later editions in The United States, Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Finland, Turkey, Israel, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iran and Greece. 1970 Collected scientific papers published: 'Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour' (Cape, London). Later edition in the United States. 1971 Book published: 'Intimate Behaviour' (Cape, London), a study of physical contact behaviour among human beings. Later editions in The United States, Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Holland, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland. Sets up research headquarters in Malta to undertake ambitious project to produce a comprehensive classification of all human action-patterns, with a view to producing an encyclopedia of human actions 1973 Returns to take up Research Fellowship at Wolfson College and to work again in Niko Tinbergen's animal behaviour research group at the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, continuing his studies of human action-patterns. 1974 Holds one-man-show of Surrealist paintings at Stooshnoff Fine Art Gallery, London, his first exhibition for over 20 years.

1976 Holds four more exhibitions of paintings, following period of intense work in his new Oxford studio: One-man-show at Wolfson College, Oxford; One-man-show at the Quadrangle Gallery, Oxford; One-man-show at the Lasson Gallery, London; and a large retrospective exhibition of 61 works covering 30 years of painting (1946-1976), at the Public Art Gallery in Swindon. 1977 Book published: 'Manwatching, a Field-Guide to Human Behaviour' (Cape, London), a popular presentation of his major investigation into human action-patterns. Later editions in The United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Italy, France, Norway, Japan. Is elected to the Board of Directors of Oxford United Football Club. 1978 Holds one-man-show of paintings at the Galerie D'eendt in Amsterdam. Is elected Vice-Chairman of Oxford United Football Club.

1979 Book published: 'Gestures, their Origins and Distribution' (Cape, London)with co-authors Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy, a report on a three-year field research project undertaken for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Foundation in New York. The project involved a survey of the gestural similarities and differences of forty locations in twenty-five different countries, across Europe and the Mediterranean. Later editions in The United States, Holland, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Portugal and Israel. Also published: 'Animal Days', a first volume of autobiography, covering the early part of his life up to the end of his curatorship at London Zoo in 1967. Later editions in The United States, France, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Japan. Undertakes a new television series for Thames TV, London, on the subject of human behaviour, called 'The Human Race', to be filmed in 1980 and 1981 for screening in spring of 1982. 1981 Book published: 'The Soccer Tribe', an analysis of the world of professional football.

Later editions in The United States, Holland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Spain, and Japan. 1982 Presents the television series 'The Human Race' for Thames TV. Later shown in many other countries. Visits Japan to make a television production called 'Manwatching in Japan', for showing on Japanese TV in autumn 1982. Begins archaeological research for a new book on 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. 1983 Novel published: 'Inrock', his first work of fiction, a science fantasy based on the surrealist world portrayed in his paintings. Intended primarily but not exclusively for children. Book published: 'The Book of Ages', a year-by-year survey of human life from birth to death. 1984 Completes work on 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. 1985 Book published: 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. Also a sequel to 'Manwatching', called 'Bodywatching'. 1986 Books published: an 'Illustrated Naked Ape' edition and two books on pets: 'Catwatching' and 'Dogwatching'. Starts work on a new TV series called 'The Animals Roadshow', co-presented with Sarah Kennedy.

A total of 40 of these programmes are made over the next three years. 1987 Book published: a sequel to 'Catwatching' called 'Catlore'. Also published this year was the first book about his paintings, called 'The Secret Surrealist'. In Scotland he covers the Edinburgh Festival for Japanese Television. In France, the French editions of 'Catwatching' and 'Dogwatching' win the Prix Literaire de 30 Million Amis. 1988 Published: the book of 'The Animals Roadshow' TV series. He also carries out a research project on the colours used in decorating human homes. The results published as a report called 'The Human Nestbuilders'. Also produces another book on animals called 'Horsewatching'. Exhibition of paintings at the Shippee Gallery in New York. Starts filming a new TV series called 'The Animal Contract', for Australian television. Exhibition of paintings in Belgium. 1989 Makes two videos on Dogs and Cats. Completes the final programmes for the 'Animals Roadshow' TV series. Starts work on 'Animalwatching' book. Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London.

1990 Books published: 'The Animal Contract', based on the TV series; and 'Animal-watching', a sequel to 'Manwatching', but dealing with the behaviour of non-human animals. 1991 Book published: 'Babywatching'. Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London to coincide with the publication of Michel Remy's book 'The Surrealist World of Desmond Morris'. Also co-presents 13 TV programmes with Sarah Kennedy for ITV called 'Animal Country'. 1992 Co-presents a second series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy. (14 half-hour programmes). Makes a Video of 'Babywatching'. Also makes a set of four videos on 'Body Language'. Holds first one-man-show of paintings in Paris. Book published: 'Christmas Watching'. 1993 Retrospective exhibition of paintings, from 1946 to 1993, at the Public Art Gallery in Swindon. Co-presents a third Series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy (13 half-hour programmes). Book published: 'The World of Animals'. 1994 Co-presents a fourth series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy.

Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London. Writes and presents 'The Human Animal', a series of six one-hour TV programmes for BBC-1. Books published: 'The Human Animal'; 'The Naked Ape Trilogy'; 'Illustrated Catwatching'; and 'Bodytalk: a World Guide to Gestures'. 1995 Book published: 'Illustrated Babywatching'. "The Human Animal" wins the Cable Ace Award in Los Angeles for best documentary series. Final (fifth) series of 13 'Animal Country' programmes made for ITV with Sarah Kennedy. 1996 Starts work on new TV series, a sequel to 'The Human Animal' called 'The Human Sexes'. Books published: 'The Illustrated Dogwatching' and 'Catworld, a Feline Encyclopedia'. Retrospective exhibition: 'Fifty Years of Surrealism' first at Stoke and then at Nottingham public galleries. 1997 Completes TV series 'The Human Sexes'. Solo exhibition at the Mayor Gallery to coincide with the publication of Silvano Levy's book: Desmond Morris - Fifty Years of Surrealism. Book published: The Human Sexes'. Son Jason marries Annie Reeves. Grand-daughter Matilda is born.

1998 Makes a 37,000 mile journey around the world visiting 21 countries in three months, researching new books and TV series. Solo exhibitions were held in Newcastle, Brussels and Antwerp. Awarded Hon. D.Sc. at Reading University. Book published: The Illustrated Horsewatching. 1999 Three new books published: Cool Cats, the 100 Cat Breeds of the World; Body Guards, Protective Amulets and Charms; The Naked Ape and Cosmetic Behaviour (with co-author Kaori Ishida, in Japanese). Solo exhibitions in Amsterdam and London, and a fourth volume about the paintings: Desmond Morris - Naked Surrealism, by Silvano Levy. 2000 Publication of THE NAKED EYE, Travels in Search of the Human Species. Grand-daughter Madeline is born. 2001 Sets off on another round-the-world trip with his wife, visiting 23 different countries. Publication of DOGS; THE ULTIMATE DICTIONARY OF OVER 1000 DOG BREEDS. Exhibition of paintings at the Galerie Pack-Huys in Mechelen, Belgium.

Publication of the CATALOGUE RAISONNE, by Silvano Levy , of the paintings of Desmond Morris, with over 1300 colour plates. 2002 Holds exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Ostend, Belgium, at the Mayor Gallery in London and at the Art Consultancy Witteveen, Amsterdam. Publication of PEOPLEWATCHING, a revised, updated and enlarged version of his 1977 book MANWATCHING. 2003 Makes a three-month journey around the world, visiting the Caribbean, Central America, North America, South Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Grand-daughter Annabelle is born. Exhibition of paintings at Solomon Gallery, Dublin. 2004 Three new books published: 'The Silent Language' (in Italian), 'The Naked Woman; a study of the female body', and 'The Nature of Happiness'. Holds solo exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London. Grandson Evan is born. 2005 Holds solo exhibitions of paintings in Amsterdam, Madrid and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Also organizes an exhibition of paintings by great apes - 'Ape Artists of the 1950s' - at the Mayor Gallery in London. 2006 Makes a three-month journey around the world, visiting the Middle East, Asia, the Far East, Australia and Africa. Publication of a volume of memoirs: WATCHING; Encounters with Humans and Other Animals. Exhibition of paintings at Galerie Pack-Huys in Mechelen, Belgium. 2007 Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting South America, the Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, USA, Mexico and the Caribbean. Further travels in the summer to Spain, Italy, Croatia and Greece. Publication of THE NAKED MAN; a Study of the Male Body, a sequel to THE NAKED WOMAN of 2004; also a tract DARK INSIDE MY HEAD, published as Surrealist Bulletin No. 2. Exhibition of paintings at the Said Business School in Oxford and at the Taurus Gallery, also in Oxford. 2008 Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London: ‘80th Birthday Retrospective.’ Completes a study of 'The Art of the Kuna'.

Travels in the summer to Spain, Gibraltar, France and Italy. New book published: BABY, the amazing story of the first two years of life. Retrospective exhibition of 130 paintings at the Williamson Art gallery in Birkenhead, with accompanying book by Silvano Levy called 'Lines of Thought; The Drawings of Desmond Morris'. Further exhibitions at the Witteveen Gallery in Amsterdam and the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2009 Paperback edition of THE NAKED MAN is published. Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia, the Far East, Australasia, and the South Pacific. In the Summer visits St Petersberg and the Baltic ports. Two new books published: PLANET APE and OWL. Exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2010 Exhibition of collages at the Verbeke Foundation in Belgium. Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting the Carribean, the South Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. In the Summer visits Iceland and Greenland to study Eskimo art. Annual exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford.

The sequel to his book BABY is published. Called CHILD; HOW CHILDREN THINK, LEARN AND GROW IN THE EARLY YEARS, it examines the behaviour of the pre-school child. 2011 Makes a trip to Alaska to study the Northwest Indian and Eskimo arts. In the Summer visits Venice and the Western Mediterranean. Annual exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2012 The second volume of Silvano Levy's CATALOGUE RAISONNE of Desmond Morris' paintings is published, covering the period from 2000 to 2012. All the 900 works produced during this period are illustrated in colour. In the summer visitS Spain, Venice, Croatia, Corfu, and Portugal. In December, the Taurus Gallery in Oxford holds its annual Christmas show of his work. 2013 Three book are published in this year. The first is MONKEY in the Reaktion Book ANIMAL series. The second is a new edition of his surrealist fantasy INROCK, this time with illustrations by the author. (Dark Windows Press) The third is a study of the evolution of human art.

Called THE ARTISTIC APE; THREE MILLION YEARS OF ART, (Red Lemon Press) it sets out to answer why it is that the human species has been so intensely creative for thousands of years. As before, In December, the Taurus Gallery in Oxford holds its annual Christmas show of his paintings. 2014 Two books are published in this year. The first is another volume in the Reaktion Book ANIMAL series, this one called LEOPARD. The second, called HEADWORKS (Dark Windows Press) is a volume of his collected poems from 1945 to 2014, accompanied by illustrations of his recent paintings. This book is launched with an exhibition of the paintings it illustrates, at the Taurus Gallery in the spring. Desmond Morris Desmond Morris Desmond Morris is a member of SIRC's panel of advisors. A world-renowned zoologist, author and painter, Dr Morris was born in Wiltshire in 1928 and educated at Birmingham and Oxford universities. Zoological research worker.

University of Oxford 1954-56 Head of Granada TV and Film Unit at Zoological Society of London 1956-59 Curator of Mammals at Zoological Society of London 1959-67 Director Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1967-68 Privately engaged in writing books, 1968-73 Research Fellow Wolfson College Oxford 1973-81 Privately engaged in writing books and making television programmes 1981-1998. Hon. D.Sc. Reading University, 1998.

Desmond Morris – TV Series The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-spined Stickleback (1958) The Story of Congo (1958) Curious Creatures (1961) The Biology of Art (1962) Apes and Monkeys (1964) The Mammals, a Guide to the Living Species (1965) Men and Snakes (with Ramona Morris, 1965) Men and Apes (with Ramona Morris, 1966) Men and Pandas (with Ramona Morris, 1966) Zootime (1966) with Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy, 1979) Animal Days (autobiography, 1979) The Book of Ages (1983) The Art of Ancient Cyprus (1985) Bodywatching, a Field-guide to the Human Species (1985) The Illustrated Naked Ape (1986) The World of Animals (1993) The Naked Ape Trilogy (1994) The Human Animal (1994) Desmond Morris,

 a Surrealist World (1997) Catworld, a Feline Encyclopedia (1997) The Human Sexes: a Natural History of Man and Woman (1997) Desmond Morris - Wikiquote Desmond Morris Jump to: navigation , search Desmond Morris (1969) Desmond John Morris , FZS (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist , ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology .

Quotes[ edit ] No matter how old we become, we can still call them 'Holy Mother' or 'Father' and put a child-like trust in them (or their agents, who often adopt similar titles for themselves). Cited in: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere (1985), Signs of the flesh: an essay on the evolution of hominid sexuality, p. 112 The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whip-cracking trainer, is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them. In: William Johnson (1990), Rose-Tinted Menagerie, p. 10 I discovered long ago that, if you write a book about cats or dogs, everybody loves you, but if you dare to write a book about human beings, all hell breaks loose. It is impossible to write an uncensored, honest book about human behaviour without offending at least part of your audience. If you feel you have a basic truth to tell, then you must tell it and be prepared to suffer the inevitable criticisms.

Desmond Morris in: "The Dan Schneider Interview 8: Desmond Morris" at cosmoetica.com, first posted 2/16/08. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs Desmond Morris (2009), Catwatching. p. 2 The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. Desmond Morris (2009), The Human Zoo, p. vii The Naked Ape (1967)[ edit ] Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (1967) 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. Introduction; Republished in: " The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris ," LIFE, Vol. 63, Nr. 25 (22 Dec. 1967), p.

95 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. Introduction Much of what we do as adults is based on this imitative absorption during our childhood years.

Frequently we imagine that we are behaving in a particular way because such behaviour accords with some abstract, lofty code of moral principles, when in reality all we are ding is obeying a deeply ingrained and long 'forgotten' set of purely imitative impressions (along with out carefully concealed instinctive urges) that makes it so hard for societies to change their customs and their 'beliefs'. Even when faced with exciting, brilliantly rational new ideas, based on the application of pure, objective intelligence, the community will still cling to its old home-based habits and prejudices. This is the cross we have to bear if we are going to sail through our vital juvenile 'blotting-paper' phase of rapidly mopping up the accumulated experiences of previous generations. We are forced to take the biased opinions along with the valuable facts. (2010), p. 86 In discussing all these aggressive and submissive behaviour patterns, it has been assumed that the individuals concerned have been 'telling the truth' and have not been consciously and deliberately modifying their actions to achieve special ends. We 'lie' more with our words than our other communicative signals, but even so the pheneomenon cannot be overlooked entirely.

It is extremely difficult to 'utter' untruths with the kind of behaviour patterns we have been discussing, but not impossible. As I have already mentioned, when parents adopt this procedure towards their young children, it usually fails much more drastically than they realize. Between adults, however, who are much preoccupied with the verbalized information content of the social interactions, it can be more successful. Unfortunately for the behaviour-liar, he typically lies only with certain selected elements of his total signalling system. Others, which he is not aware of, give the game away. (2010), p. 115-116 The most successful behaviour-liars are those who, instead of consciously concentrating on modifying specific signals, think themselves into the basic mood they wish to convey and then let the small details take care of themselves. This method is frequently used with great success by professional liars, such as actors and actresses. Their entire working lives are spent performing behavioural lies, a process which can sometimes be extremely damaging to their private lives. Politicians and diplomats are also required to perform an undue amount of behavioural lying, but unlike the actors they are not socially 'licensed to lie', and the resultant guilt feelings tend to interfere with their performances.

Also, unlike the actors, they do not undergo prolonged training courses. (2000), p. 116 A belief in the validity of the acquisition of knowledge and a scientific understanding of the world we live in, the creation and appreciation of aesthetic phenomena in all their many forms, and the broadening and deepening of our range of experiences in day-to-day living, is rapidly becoming the ‘religion’ of our time. p. 148 The Naked Ape Trilogy: "Naked Ape", "Human Zoo", "Intimate Behaviour": Amazon.co.uk: Desmond Morris: 9780224041409: Books Product Description About the Author Desmond Morris was born in Wiltshire in 1928. After gaining a degree in Zoology from Birmingham University, he obtained his D.Phil. form the University of Oxford. He became curator of mammals at London Zoo in 1959, a post he held for eight years. He was already the author of some fifty scientific papers and seven books before completing The Naked Ape in 1967, which was to sell over 10 million copies throughout the world and be translated into almost every known language.

Desmond Morris has mande many television programmes and films on human and animal behaviour, his friendly and accessible approach making him popular with both adults and children, and he is one of the best-known presenters of natural history programmes. What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Question: Who wrote "The Naked Ape" and "The Human Zoo"?
Answer: Desmond Morris