(2) DESMOND MORRIS –

THE HUMAN ANIMAL: A PERSONAL VIEW OF THE HUMAN SPECIES (1994)

 

“You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals”

The book of the BBC TV series also written (and presented) by Desmond Morris – English zoologist (and surrealist painter!) – that is the New Testament to the Old Testament in my first-place entry, also the book of a BBC TV series written by its presenter.

I know, I know – it’s my running gag to call my god-tier top place entries, usually my top two or top three entries, my Old Testament and New Testament of the subject of the top ten. However, in this case the gag comes closest being true as books to live by and that shape my worldview – we are but animals, apes to be precise.

As such, this book (and the TV series) replays the grand theme of Morris’ magnum opus with its evocative title, The Naked Ape – as can be seen in that book’s subtitle, A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal.

As Morris stated, “I’ve sometimes been accused of degrading mankind, of insulting human dignity, of making man beastly. This surprised me because I like animals, and I feel proud to call myself one. I’ve never looked down upon them, so to call human beings animals is not, to me, degrading. It’s simply being honest: putting us in our place as part of the scheme of nature on the planet Earth.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Indeed, these days, it’s not uncommon to see the reverse – people elevating animals or the natural world over humans, disparaging the latter or even regarding placing humans among animals as degrading to animals. I wouldn’t go quite that far but I for one welcome animals as our brothers and sisters.

Morris “covers a fascinating variety of subjects – our hunting instincts have been channelled into an extraordinary range of sporting activities; how the modern world can trace its roots back to an early primate picking up a stone that resembles a face…how territorial fights erupt when the tribal systems within our overcrowded cities break down”.

There are six chapters, each corresponding to an episode of the series.

1 – The Language of the Body

“A world tour of cultural body language differences” but which demonstrates biological similarities that are virtually universal, not just with other humans but chimpanzees.

2 – The Hunting Ape

Morris adds another epithet to ape in describing humanity, albeit not quite as iconic as the naked ape.

“Morris traces back our ancestry from arboreal gatherers to bipedal hunters” – and how we are still hunters at heart.

3 – The Human Zoo

Homesick for the savannah – “the evolutionary and psychological implications of modern city living, a kind of natural environment to which our genes have not yet time to adapt”.

4 – The Biology of Love

“So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”

Needless to say, the most controversial episode of the TV series, albeit not quite so much in the book. Let’s just say they go in for an extreme close-up of the female orgasm.

5 – The Immortal Genes

The natural sequel to the previous chapter – children!

“Looking for reasons why we devote more time than any other species to raising our offspring”. Spoiler – we’re born too soon, even with heads (and brains) so big they push the limits of childbearing hips.

6 – Beyond Survival

Evocative of the playfulness of Bob Black’s The Abolition of Work in my previous entry, we are indeed more homo ludens than homo sapiens.

It’s amusing to think that when you boil them down, “things like art, music, literature and philosophy” are ultimately play.

“What we do become once have our basic needs for food, warmth and shelter, as well as various concepts like creativity, artistic progression and symbolic thinking to demonstrate how aesthetic decisions are being made every day by people across the world”.

Ultimately, we are what we are through our “insatiable playfulness”.

As Morris concludes, “of all the millions of species that have ever lived, we the human animal, are by far the most extraordinary. We’re the magic combination, the threshold leaper, the risk-taker, the venerable child for all occasions.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT HUMANITY-TIER?)