The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris (born in 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist, author and painter, known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape and for TV programs (see Desmond Morris Wikipedia profile).

Below are the key findings from The Naked Ape:

The origins

• Humans are the only species of monkeys and apes, and one of the few mammals with no hair. Out of the 193 living species of monkeys and apes, 192 are covered with hair. Homo sapiens is the only naked ape. Out of the 4,237 species of living mammals, most are attached to their protective, furry covering, which helps maintain a constant, high body temperature. With few exceptions, mammals who have discarded their hair are (1) those who launched into an entirely new medium, such as flying mammals (e.g., bats), burrowing mammals (e.g., naked mole rat, aardvark, armadillo), and aquatic mammals (e.g., whales, dolphins, hippos), or (2) abnormally heavy giants which have peculiar heating and cooling problems (e.g., rhinos, elephants).
• Primates originally arose from small primitive insectivore mammals, living in forests. After the collapse of reptiles, mammals ventured into new territories, and evolved into different branches (from plant eaters to sharp-tooth killers). Early primates broadened their diet to include fruits, nuts, berries, buds and leaves, their vision broadened, their eyes came forward to the front of the face, their hands developed as food graspers, and their brains enlarged. Monkeys developed long, balancing tails, and their body size increased. Some monkeys evolved into apes: bigger and heavier creatures, specialized in forest existence.
• The forest ape became a ground ape. The climate began to work against apes, and their forest strongholds reduced in size. Most clinged to forests (ancestors of chimps, gorillas, gibbons, and orangs), and saw their population decline. The ancestors of the naked ape left the forests and entered into competition with ground-dwellers. They had to become either better killers than old-time carnivores, or better grazers than old-time herbivores.
• The ground ape became a predatorial hunting ape. An entirely new approach was made, using artificial weapons instead of natural ones. Hunting techniques improved, both in terms of weapons (from tool-using to tool-making) and in terms of social cooperation (pack-hunting, social organization).
• The hunting ape became a territorial ape. As the complexity of the hunt increased, it became essential to abandon nomadic ways and have a home base to come back to with the spoils, where the females and young would be waiting and could share the food.
• Lastly, the territorial ape became a cultural ape. He began to develop fire, food storage, artificial shelters.
• As a result, we are vegetarians turned carnivores, which makes us unique among existing monkeys and apes. Major conversions of this kind are not unknown in other groups however, the giant panda is an example of the reverse process.
• A major switch of this sort produces an animal with a dual personality. It takes millions of years to perfect a dramatically new animal model, and the pioneer forms, such as the naked ape, are usually very odd mixtures.
• Typical open-country hunting carnivores and typical forest-dwelling fruit-picking primates have very different characteristics:
  • The best examples of “pure” carnivores are wild dogs and wolves, and big cats (e.g., lions, tigers, leopards). They are equipped with acute sense organs (hearing, eyes, sense of smell), an athletic physique (sprinting, long-distance running, powerful jaws, sharp teeth, and/or muscular front limbs with pointed claws), and a digestive system geared to accept long periods of fasting followed by bloating gorges. Their food is highly nutritional and stored simply (buried or carried into trees), and special behavior patterns have developed to dispose of feces. Periods of intensive activity are interspersed with periods of great laziness and relaxation. Powerful inhibitions (e.g., submissive postures) exist against using their lethal weapons on other members of their own species. Hunting methods vary: e.g., solitary stalking, group action, encircling maneuvers, serial attacks. Food-sharing is practiced in a number of species, and carnivores with young go to considerable trouble to feed their offspring.
  • By contrast, the sensory equipment of higher primates is dominated by the sense of vision rather than the sense of smell. Eyes are better at picking colors and static details (shape, texture). Hearing is important but less so than for tracking killers. The sense of taste is more refined. The diet is more varied and highly flavored, with a strong positive response to sweet-tasting objects. Their physique is good for climbing and clambering, less so for sprinting and endurance. Hands are good for grasping but not for tearing or striking. Jaws and teeth are reasonably strong, but much less so than carnivores, as killing is not a basic part of their way of life. Feeding is spread out, with a life of non-stop snacks. No special behavior has developed to dispose of feces. Because of the static nature and abundance of food, there is no need for the group to split up to search for it. Even when they do split up from time to time, they are never alone as it would make them too vulnerable to killers. The cooperative spirit found in such pack-hunters as wolves is largely absent, and competitiveness and dominance are the order of the day. There is little need to cover great distances. The act of returning to a fixed home base is far less common. Primates are not territorial animals. They are plagued with lice and certain other external parasites, but are completely flea-less (due to their life cycle, fleas are parasites of animals with a fixed home base).
• Our hunting ape ancestors had to undergo several changes.
  • The hunting ape became an infantile ape. The naked ape had the wrong kind of sensory equipment for life on the ground: his nose was weak, his ears not sharp enough, his physique inadequate for endurance and sprints. Fortunately, he had an excellent brain. An evolutionary process called “neoteny“, by which certain juvenile characters (but not all) are retained and prolonged into adult life, enabled him to (1) greatly increase his brain-power and develop weapons (while the brains of chimps reach 70% of their final size at birth, and 100% after 6 months, the brains of humans reach 23% of their final size at birth, and 100% after 23 years), (2) run vertically with his hands free to wield weapons, and (3) have a longer childhood during which he could learn from his parents and other adults.
  • Constant snacks were replaced by big, spaced meals, and food storage was practiced.
  • Cooperation and food sharing emerged because of the erratic nature of food supply.
  • A fixed home base was developed, along with stronger aggressive responses to defend it.
  • The role of the sexes had to become more distinct: because of the long period of dependency of the young, the females found themselves confined to the home base (unlike pure carnivores), while all-male hunting groups had to carry food supplies home. [Personal note: this assumption has raised recent criticism.]
  • Pair-bonds (rare among primates) developed between males and females, which solved several problems: the burden of rearing slowly developing young could be shared (females could devote to their maternal duties while being sure of their males’ support), hunting males could safely leave their females unprotected from advances of other males, and reduced rivalries between males helped cooperation. But this process was only partially completed and our earlier primate urges keep reappearing.
  • Naked skin developed, most likely as a cooling device to cope with overheating from chasing preys. Various less convincing hypotheses for the survival value of naked skin have been advanced: (1) coping with skin parasites from fixed home base, (2) coping with diseases from messy eating, (3) reduced resistance when swimming during a transition phase as an aquatic ape, (4) extension of sex differences to make females more attractive, (5) increased sensitivity to touch to tighten pair-bonds, or (6) cooling device to cope with day heat (campfires taking care of night cold).
  • A subcutaneous fat layer developed to keep the body warm at other times.
  • The main problems of the naked ape is that his cultural advances will race ahead of genetic ones.

Sex

• Sexual behavior in our species goes through three characteristic phases: pair-formation, pre-copulatory activity, and copulation, usually but not always in that order.
• Compared to other primates:
  • The pair-formation stage (courtship) is remarkably prolonged.
  • There is much more intense sexual activity, mostly occurring when the partners are in a pair-bonded state (though the pair-bonding mechanism is far from perfect).
  • The female can experience a climax and her period of sexual receptivity is less restricted.
• The naked ape had to develop the capacity for falling in love, for becoming sexually imprinted on a single partner, for evolving a pair-bond:
  • The males had to be sure that their females were going to be faithful to them when they left them alone to go hunting. So the females had to develop a pairing tendency.
  • If the weaker males were going to be expected to co-operate on the hunt, they had to be given more sexual rights. The females would have to be more shared out, the sexual organization more democratic, less tyrannical. Each male, too, would need a strong pairing tendency.
  • The males were now armed with deadly weapons and sexual rivalries would be much more dangerous: again, a good reason for each male being satisfied with one female.
  • Paternal behavior would have to be developed and the parental duties shared between the mother and the father: another good reason for a strong pair-bond.
• Several factors help the naked ape achieve this:
  • The loss of the deep parental bond forged during his long childhood creates a “relationship void” that has to be filled.
  • A prolonged and exciting courtship phase ensures falling in love.
  • Intense and elaborate sexual activity (helped by prolonged sexual receptivity, numerous erogenous zones, and peculiar visual signaling devices) ensures staying in love to cement the pair-bond.
  • Exogamy developed: For the pair-bond system of naked apes to survive, both the daughters and the sons would have to find mates of their own, and set off to establish a new breeding base after reaching puberty. This is typical of territorial carnivores, but not of primates (for the latter, adult males drive out the young males into an inferior status on the edge of society and mate with the young females).
• Many controls and restrictions have been introduced to prevent sexual arousal of strangers and to curtail sexual interaction outside the pair-bond:
  • Garments covering genitals, breasts and sometimes lips.
  • Introduction of privacy for the sexual acts.
  • Ban on physical contacts with strangers.
  • De-sexualized body postures.
  • Suppression of body hair and body scent.
  • Artificial moral codes, or sexual laws.
• But the naked ape’s evolution as a highly sexed primate can take only so much of this treatment, leading to counteracting and contradictory measures:
  • Breast-enlarging brassieres or cosmetic surgery.
  • Padding.
  • High heels.
  • Lipstick, rouge and perfume.
• While the system was designed to work in a situation where the female is producing a large family of overlapping children and the male is off hunting with other males, two things have changed, so that the pair-bond has a lot to put up with:
  • There is a tendency to limit artificially the number of offspring. This means that the mated female will not be at full parental pressure and will be more sexually available during her mate’s absence.
  • There is also a tendency for many females to join the “hunting” group (i.e., work).
• Although the powerful sexual imprinting usually keeps the mated pair together, it does not eliminate their interest in outside sexual activities:
  • Extramarital copulation (26% of married females and 50% of married males by the age of 40 in America).
  • Voyeurism (e.g., movies).
  • Prostitution.
  • If either males or females cannot for some reason obtain sexual access to their opposite numbers, they may find temporary sexual outlets in other ways, e.g., masturbation (frequent), partners of the same sex (less frequent) or of other species (very rare).
• Early sexual rewards in unisexual organizations (e.g., boarding schools) can lead to lasting homosexual imprinting, as can the exposure of offspring to an unduly masculine and dominant mother, or to an unduly weak and effeminate father (which creates confusion).

Rearing

• Labor is hard due to vertical locomotion, and requires in most cases the aid of other adults.
• The burden of parental care is heavier and more extensive for the naked ape than for any other living species.
• Parental duties include protecting, feeding, cleaning, playing and training the offspring.
• The process of infant feeding is burdensome compared to other species and sometimes fails due to the design of breasts (which is primarily sexual rather than maternal in function).
• Children are comforted by the soothing nature of heart-beats or heart-beat like rhythm, due to imprinting in the womb (which is why 80% of mothers hold their baby in their left arms, why feelings of love are said to be located in the heart, and why the rocking motion lulls babies to sleep and calms anxious adults).
• Growth is very rapid during the first 2 years, reasonably fast until the age of 6, slows down until the age of 10 for girls and 11 for boys, and puts on another spurt after puberty, until the age of 15 for girls and 17 for boys.
• Sleeping time decreases from 16 hours a day on average for newborns to 13 hours by the age of 2, 12 hours by the age of 5, 9 hours by the age of 13, and 8 hours for adolescents and adults. There appears to be no relationship between intelligence and the amount of sleep for adults. For children, the relationship is peculiar: intelligent pre-school children sleep less than dull ones (they learn more by being more wide-awake for longer), but the relationship reverses after the age of 7 (they are forced to learn so much that the more responsive ones are worn out). Healthy individuals of all ages take about 20 minutes to fall asleep. The need for artificial awakening devices indicates insufficient sleep, which will entail reduced alertness.
• Movements are comparatively limited for newborns. At 1 month on average, the child can raise its chin up off the ground, at 2 months it can raise its chest off the ground, at 3 months it can reach towards objects, at 4 months it can sit up with support, at 5 months it can grasp objects, at 7 months it can sit alone without assistance, at 9 months it can stand up by holding on to furniture, at 10 months it can creep on the ground, at 11 months it can walk when led by the parent’s hand, at 12 months it can pull itself up, at 13 months it can climb stairs, and at 15 months it can walk alone by itself.
• The rate of learning in vocal imitation is unique to our species. Speech starts at 15 months on average, starting with a few simple words. But soon the vocabulary blossoms at an impressive rate: by the age of two, the child can speak 300 words, by the age of three it can speak 900 words, by the age of four c.1,600 and by the age of five c.2,100. Painstaking attempts to train a chimpanzee to speak led to its mastering only 3 words by the age of thirty months and only 7 words by the age of six. The difference is a question of brain, not voice. Conversely, certain birds have striking powers of vocal imitation, but with no use in reference to outside events.
• Basic sounds (scream, whimper, laugh, roar, rhythmic crying) and faces (smile, grin, frown, fixed stare, panic face, angry face) shared with other primates retain their important roles as communication devices. They emerge without training and mean the same in all cultures.
  • Crying is the earliest and most basic mood-signal we give. It is shared with thousands of other species. Infants cry if they are in pain, hungry, left alone, faced with a strange and unfamiliar stimulus, if they lose their source of physical support or if they are thwarted in attaining an urgent goal. These categories boil down to physical pain and insecurity. The signal normally produces protective responses from the parent, until the signal is switched off. The mothers of cry-babies are nervous and anxious in their dealings with their offspring: this agitation is signaled to the infant, who demands protection, further increasing the mother’s distress, leading to a vicious cycle, which can be broken by the mother accepting the situation and becoming calm. The problem can also correct itself when the infant starts recognizing the mother’s face at the age of 3-4 months.
  • Laughing and crying are highly similar as response patterns, despite the different moods (muscular tension, opening of the mouth, pulling back of the lips, exaggerated breathing, reddening of the face, watering of the eyes). The laughing reaction evolved out of the crying one, and coincides with parental recognition. When the baby singles out its mother’s face, it also begins to grow afraid of other strange adults. If the mother does something that startles it, she gives the following signal: “There may appear to be danger, but because it is coming from me, you do not need to take it seriously”. The outcome is a response that is half crying reaction and half parental-recognition gurgle, i.e., a laugh, which says “I recognize that the danger is not real”. The earliest causes of laughter are shock stimuli performed by the safe protector: peek-a-boo, knee-dropping, lifting high, and later tickling.
  • Laughter becomes a play signal, inviting dramatic interactions with parents, and enabling the child to explore its capacities and the properties of the world. If the interactions become too frightening or painful, the reaction can switch into crying. The naked ape remains a playful ape even as an adult, as part of his exploratory nature. Laughing at someone can become a potent social weapon, conveying the insulting message that the person being laughed at is frighteningly odd and not worth taking seriously.
  • Smiling evolved into a greeting and friendly signal. When a young chimp screams for attention, its mother grabs it, and the baby clings to her. Infants, being to weak to cling and having nothing to cling to, use smiles to reward the mother and make her want to stay with them. When the infant smiles at its mother, she responds with a similar signal: each rewards the other and the bond between them tightens in both directions. In later social interactions, mutual smiling reassures smilers that they are both in a slightly apprehensive but non-aggressive state of mind. Agitated or anxious mothers who try to conceal their mood by forcing a smile to avoid upsetting the infant will not fool it, and may even cause confusion and permanent damage if done a great deal.
  • Aggression arrives on the scene after a few months, with temper tantrums, angry crying, and attacks on small objects (e.g., biting, shaking, scratching, and striking). Pure attack comes when the infant is sure of itself and aware of its physical capacities, and is accompanied by facial signals (tight lips, fixed eye staring, lowered eyebrows). Aggressive patterns show a marked rise in frequency and intensity when the density of a group of children is increased.
  • Training is done by a punishment-and-reward system, as with other species. But the offspring also learn by imitation, a process which is poorly developed in most other mammals, but highly refined in our species. The naked ape is a teaching ape. The persistence of customs and beliefs is linked to this imitative absorption during childhood.
  • Our sharp curiosity and urge to explore work as a powerful antidote to the imitative learning process.
  • Cultures tend to (i) flounder if they become too rigid as a result of slavery to imitative repetition, or (ii) disintegrate if they become too daring and rashly exploratory. Those with a good balance between imitation /copying and curiosity / experimentation will thrive.

Exploration

• All mammals have a strong exploratory urge, but it is more crucial for non-specialist species. While species which perfected a particular survival trick (be it feeding or self-defense) do not need to bother about the complexity of the world, non-specialists are never sure where their next meal or source of danger may be coming from, and must have a constantly high level of curiosity and alertness.
• While it might seem inefficient not to specialize, there is a serious drawback in the specialist way of life: everything is fine as long as the special survival device works, but if the environment undergoes a major change the specialist is left stranded. [Personal note: this reminds me of the argument of Nassim Taleb that too much optimization can create fragility].
• Of all non-specialists, the naked ape is the most opportunist. All young monkeys are inquisitive, but this fades as they become adult. Due to neoteny, humans never stop investigating, and are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.
  • Both chimps and children enjoy basic drawing, banging things, dancing, and rhythmical physical performance.
  • But the naked ape takes it much further by experimenting towards elaborate forms of drawing (faces and other representations), painting, sculpture, music, singing, dancing, exercise, and sports.
• Human activities emerge as an extension of infantile play patterns or as the superimposition of play rules to adult information and communication systems:
  • Investigate the unfamiliar until it has become familiar.
  • Impose rhythmic repetition of the familiar.
  • Vary this repetition in as many ways as possible.
  • Develop the most satisfying variations at the expense of others.
  • Combine and recombine these variations together.
  • Explore in this manner for exploration’s own sake.
• While science and technology have largely been concerned with survival goals such as fighting (weapons), feeding (agriculture), nest-building (architecture) and comfort (medicine), the pure exploratory urge has also invaded the scientific sphere.
• In all exploratory behavior, there is a battle between neophilia (love of the new) and neophobia (fear of the new). The urge to become familiar with the unknown is so strong that parental restraint is necessary. While parents may be able to guide curiosity, they can never suppress it. And there are always enough adults who retain their juvenile inventiveness and curiosity to enable populations to progress and expand. The peculiar behavior of animals caged in zoos can be seen in our own species, and remind us of the enormous importance of achieving a good balance between our neophobic and neophiliac tendencies. If we do not have this, we cannot function properly.
• For a child, becoming a member of the juvenile “play group“ is a critical step in its development. During the early phase the infant is loved, rewarded and protected by the mother. It comes to understand security. In the later phase it is encouraged to be more outward-going, to participate in social contacts with other juveniles. Experiments with monkeys have revealed that isolation in infancy produce a socially withdrawn, anti-sexual and anti-parental adult. In our own species, if children do not experience the socializing effects of the rough-and-tumble of the juvenile play groups, they are liable to remain shy and withdrawn for the rest of their lives, find sexual pair-bonding difficult or impossible and, if they do manage to become parents, will make bad ones.

Fighting

• Animals fight amongst themselves for one of two very good reasons: either (1) to establish their dominance in a social hierarchy, or (2) to establish their territorial rights over a particular piece of ground. Some species are purely hierarchical, with no fixed territories. Some are purely territorial, with no hierarchy problems. Some have hierarchies on their territories and have to contend with both forms of aggression. We belong to the last group: we have it both ways.
• There is a rigidly established social hierarchy in most species of monkeys and apes, with a dominant male in charge of the group, and the others ranged below him in varying degrees of subordination. When he becomes too old or weak to maintain his domination, he is overthrown by a younger, sturdier male, who then assumes the mantle of the colony boss. There is nearly always a tyrant, but he is sometimes a benign and rather tolerant tyrant, as in the case of the gorilla: he shares the females amongst the lesser males, is generous at feeding times, and only asserts himself when something crops up that cannot be shared, or when there are signs of a revolt or of unruly fighting amongst the weaker members.
• This basic system had to be changed when the naked ape became a co-operative hunter with a fixed home base and dependent offspring:
  • The group had to become territorial to defend the region of its fixed base.
  • Within the group, the tyrannical hierarchy system of the usual primate colony had to be modified to ensure full co-operation from the weaker members when out hunting. But it could not be abolished altogether: there had to be a mild hierarchy, with stronger members and a top leader.
  • In addition to group defense of territory and hierarchy organization, the prolonged dependency of the young, forcing us to adopt pair-bonded family units, demanded yet another form of self-assertion. Each male, as the head of a family, became involved in defending his own individual home base inside the general colony base.
• When a mammal becomes aggressively aroused, a number of basic physiological changes occur within its body: adrenalin pours into the blood, the heart beats faster and is pumped to the brain (for quick thinking) and to the muscles (for violent action), blood takes less time to coagulate, the process of digestion stops, carbohydrates flood the blood with sugar which increases muscular efficiency, breathing becomes quicker, and there is profuse sweating to help cool the body.
• The animal begins by threatening to attack. In this tense state of conflict between aggression and fear, there are flashes of parasympathetic activity (i.e., preserving and restoring reserves) interspersed with sympathetic symptoms (i.e., preparing the body for violent activity), e.g., mouth dryness / excessive salivation, tightened bowels / sudden defecation, pallor / reddening. This physiological turbulence provides a rich source of signals: autonomous signals (scent-marking, grunts and roars, chest puffing, hair erection, aggressive sweating), intention movements (stylized postures, combat “dances”), displacement activities (cleaning, instant sleep, nest-building). In most encounters these threats will be sufficient to resolve the dispute without the contestants coming to blows.
• Full-blooded fighting only takes place as a last resort, when signaling has failed to settle a dispute, e.g., under conditions of extreme crowding. Then the signals give way to the brutal mechanics of physical attack: teeth are used to bite, slash and stab, the head and horns to butt and spear, the body to ram, bump and push, the legs to claw, kick and swipe, the hands to grasp and squeeze, and sometimes the tail to thrash and whip.
• As soon as the enemy has been sufficiently subdued, it ceases to be a threat and is ignored. It is extremely rare for one contestant to kill the other. Species that have evolved special killing techniques for dealing with their prey seldom employ these when fighting their own kind.
• For the loser, fleeing is not always possible. Signaling to the stronger animal that he is no longer a threat and that he does not intend to continue the fight is achieved by the performance of certain characteristic submissive displays that either switch off agggressive signals (e.g., inactivity, crouching, cowering, offering a vulnerable area, raising one’s head, compressing one’s hair) or switch on ngon-aggressive signals (e.g., juvenile food-begging posture, adoption of a female sexual posture, grooming signals).
• In human beings, aggressive arousal produces the same physiological tensions. We can also send powerful signals: (1) flushing and paling : while red faced signals inhibition, white faced / tight-lipped signals action and is much more likely to result in an attack, (2) breathing: rapid breathing is a danger signal, while snorts and gurgles are less of a threat, (3) fist-clenching and fist-shaking, (4) aggressive movements redirected to bystanders or objects, (5) facial expressions: lowered eyebrows, smooth forehead, and tight lips signal attack, while raised eyebrows, wrinkled forehead, and exposed teeth signal fear, (6) eye-staring, (7) appeasement signals: lowering of the body and of the eyes, begging posture, friendly handshake, patting.
• Displacement activities are also performed to relieve tension:
  • They occur with particularly high frequency during the initial stages of social encounters, where hidden fears and aggressions are lurking just below the surface: e.g., at a dinner party, or any small social gathering, as soon as the mutual appeasement ceremonies of handshaking and smiling are over, displacement cigarettes, drinks and food-snacks are immediately offered.
  • When we are in more intense moments of aggressive tension, we tend to revert to displacement activities of a kind that we share with other primate species (scratch our heads, bite our nails, “wash” our faces with our hands, tug at our beards or moustaches, adjust our hair, rub, pick, sniff or blow our noses, stroke our ear-lobes, clean our ear-passages, rub our chins, lick our lips, or rub our hands together in a rinsing action). The subordinate members display a higher frequency of self-grooming activities, while dominant individuals have an almost complete absence of such actions.
• These aggressive and submissive behavior patterns can be consciously and deliberately modified:
  • The most successful behavior-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.
  • When pulled over by the police, it works to show an attitude of submission: (1) admit guilt based on sheer stupidity and inferiority, (2) express gratitude and admiration, (3) display fear and submission in body posture and facial expression, (4) get quickly out of the car (to weaken your territorial status and abandon your dominant seated position), (5) having stood up, however, crouch and lower your head, (6) make anxious facial expressions, look away, and perform a few displacement self-grooming activities.
• When the situation deteriorates into physical contact, the naked ape behaves in a way that contrasts with other primates:
  • For them the teeth are the most important weapons, but for us it is the hands. Where they grab and bite, we grab and squeeze, or strike out with clenched fists. Only in infants or very young children does biting play a significant role in unarmed combat.
  • The moment that serious combat begins, artificial weapons are brought into play. The simplest form of artificial weapon is a hard, solid, but unmodified, natural object of wood or stone, thrown or used as extensions of the fist for delivering heavy blows.
  • By simple improvements in the shapes of these objects, the crude actions of throwing and hitting became augmented with the addition of spearing, slashing, cutting, and stabbing movements.
  • The next great behavioral trend in attacking methods was the extension of the distance between the attacker and his enemy (with spears, arrows, guns, bombs, and rockets) and it is this step that has nearly been our undoing. The moment attacking is done from such a distance that the appeasement signals of the losers cannot be read by the winners, then violent aggression is going to go raging on. The outcome is that rivals, instead of being defeated, are indiscriminately destroyed.
  • In addition, loyalty on the hunt has become loyalty in fighting, and war is born. Because of the vicious combination of attack remoteness and group co-cooperativeness, the original goal has become blurred for the individuals involved in the fighting. They attack now more to support their comrades than to dominate their enemies, and their inherent susceptibility to direct appeasement is given little or no chance to express itself.
  • The only sound biological solution to the dilemma is massive depopulation (through the widespread promotion of contraception or abortion), or a rapid spread of the species on to other planets, combined with other measures (disarmament, de-patriotization, promotion of symbolic substitutes, intellectual control over aggression).
• Religious activities consist of the coming together of large groups of people to perform repeated and prolonged submissive displays to appease a dominant individual with immense power (animal, wise and elderly man, god). The extreme potency of religion is a measure of the strength of our fundamental biological tendency, inherited directly from our monkey and ape ancestors, to submit ourselves to an all-powerful, dominant member of the group who could keep the group under control.
• The spatial defense of the home site of the family unit has remained with us through all our massive architectural advances. The design of our cities and towns is still dominated by our ancient, naked-ape need to divide our groups up into small, discrete, family territories. One of the important features of the family territory is that it must be easily distinguished in some way from all the others: separate location, shape and general appearance, name on the door. The motor-car and the business office are sub-territories, offshoots of his home base.
• The individual, as opposed to the places he frequents, must also be defended:
  • His social status must be maintained and if possible improved, but it must be done cautiously, or he will jeopardize his co-operative contacts.
  • Our behavior is designed to operate in small tribal groups probably numbering well under a hundred individuals. In such situations every member of the tribe will be known personally to every other member, as is the case with other species of apes and monkeys today. In this type of social organization, it is easy enough for the dominance hierarchy to work itself out and become stabilized, with only gradual changes as members become older and die. In a massive city community the situation is much more stressful. Every day exposes the urbanite to sudden contacts with countless strangers, a situation unheard of in any other primate species.
  • In order to facilitate this lack of social contact, anti-touching behavior patterns develop. By carefully avoiding staring at one another, gesturing in one another’s direction, signaling in any way, or making physical bodily contact, we manage to survive in an otherwise impossibly over-stimulating social situation. If the no-touching rule is broken, we immediately apologize to make it clear that it was purely accidental.

Feeding

• Ancestral fruit-picking patterns had to become modified into co-operative prey-killing, which led to fundamental changes in the naked ape’s feeding routine: more elaborate food-seeking, urge to kill prey partially independent of the urge to eat, food taken to a fixed home base for consumption, greater food preparation, larger and more spaced out meals, increase in the meat component, food storage and sharing, modified defecation activities.
• The improved food-collecting techniques of modern agriculture have left the majority of the adult males in our societies without a hunting role.
  • They compensate for this by going out to “work”.
  • Although working has largely replaced hunting today, it has not completely eliminated the more primitive forms of expression of this basic urge.
  • One of the essential features of the hunt is that it is a tremendous gamble and so it is not surprising that gambling, in the many stylized forms it takes today, should have such a strong appeal for us.
  • For the average lower-class male, the nature of the work he is required to do is poorly suited to the demands of the hunting drive. It is too repetitive, too predictable. It lacks the elements of challenge, luck and risk so essential to the hunting male. For this reason, lower-class males share with the (non-working) upper-class males a greater need to express their hunting urges than do the middle classes,
• The urge to kill prey has been suppressed, with a few exceptions: activities of young boys, sport-hunting, and bullfighting.
• As typical primates we ought to find ourselves munching away on small, non-stop snacks. But we are not typical primates. Our carnivorous evolution has modified the whole system. The typical carnivore gorges itself on large meals, well spaced out in time, and we clearly fall in with this pattern, with 1-4 meals per day.
• There are three alternative explanations as to why we heat our food: (1) It helps to simulate “prey temperature”, (2) We have such weak teeth that we are forced to “tenderize” the meat by cooking it, (3) By increasing the temperature of the food, we improve its flavor.
• We can only respond to four basic tastes: sour, salt, bitter and sweet. All the more subtle and varied “flavors” that we respond to so sensitively are not, in fact, tasted, but smelled. Our sweet-tooth is something alien to the true carnivore, but typically primate-like.
• There are two elements in a food object that make it attractive to us: its nutritive value and its palatability. In nature, these two factors go hand in hand, but in artificially produced foodstuffs they can be separated, and this can be dangerous.
  • Food objects that are nutritionally almost worthless can be made powerfully attractive simply by adding a large amount of artificial sweetener.
  • Adults face another danger: because their food is in general made so tasty – so much more tasty than it would be in nature – its palatability value rises sharply, and eating responses are over-stimulated.
  • The result is in many cases an unhealthily overweight condition. The only true answer to the problem would be to eat less, but super-palatability signals and “displacement feeding” make this difficult.
• Primates tend to have a wider range of food objects in their diets than carnivores. When we became killers, we had the best of both worlds. We added meat with a high nutritive value to our diet, but we did not abandon our old primate omnivore habits. With elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient primate feeding patterns, but the vegetarian creed has had remarkably little success.

Comfort

• Mammals indulge in a great deal of grooming, licking, nibbling, scratching and rubbing: their hair has to be maintained in good order if it is to keep its owner warm, and free of diseases and skin parasites. To clean hard-to-reach areas, the solution is social grooming, particularly developed among higher primates. When a groomer monkey approaches a groomee monkey, the former signals its intentions to the latter with a characteristic facial expression and performs a rapid lip-smacking movement, often sticking its tongue out between each smack. Because social grooming is a co-operative, non-aggressive activity, the lip-smacking pattern has become a friendly signal.
• For the naked ape, smiling has replaced lip-smacking, and talking (notably the meaningless, polite chatter of social occasions) has substituted grooming to maintain the social togetherness.
• Hairdressing as three functions: (1) It cleans the hair, (2) It provides an outlet for social grooming, and (3) It decorates the groomee.
• Medical care has also developed out of simple skin care.
  • There is strong evidence to suggest that minor infections and sicknesses (e.g., coughs, colds, flu, backache, headache, stomach upsets, skin rashes, sore throats) are related to primitive “grooming demands”. The patient provokes friendly sympathy and care, which is alone sufficient to cure the illness. The administering of pills and medicines replaces the ancient grooming actions and provides an occupational ritual to sustain the groomee-groomer relationship.
  • If the need for comfort is intense, then the ailment becomes more intense. An ailment that is severe enough to put us helplessly to bed recreates for us the comforting attention of our secure infancy: we may think we are taking a strong dose of medicine, but in reality it is a strong dose of security that we need and that cures us.
  • We are exposed to these common viruses and bacteria all the time, but we only occasionally fall prey to them. Individuals with social problems are much more susceptible to them than successful or socially well adjusted individuals.
  • We are also to some extent frustrated groomers, with a need to care for the sick. Some individuals have such a great need to care for others that they may actively promote and prolong sickness in a companion in order to be able to express their grooming urges more fully.
• Self-cleaning: Like other primates we still scratch ourselves, rub our eyes, pick our sores, and lick our wounds. We also share with them a strong tendency to sunbathe. In addition we have added a number of specialized cultural patterns, notably washing with water: this puts a severe strain on the production of antiseptic and protective oils and salts by the skin glands, but removes the dirt that is the source of diseases.
• Temperature control: Like all mammals and birds, we have evolved a constant, high body temperature, giving us greatly increased physiological efficiency. If the external environment becomes too hot or too cold, (1) we quickly experience acute discomfort, which acts as an early-warning system, and (2) the body takes certain automatic steps to stabilize its heat level (vasodilation and sweating, vasoconstriction and shivering). Cultural additions were made: fire, clothing, insulation, ventilation, refrigeration. Hands and feet use sweating also occurs during emotional situations.

Animals

• Higher forms of animal life are aware of other species, which they view as prey, symbionts, competitors, parasites, or predators.
• Prey: One feature that stands out is our tendency to domesticate certain prey species e.g., large mammals (goats, sheep, reindeer, pigs, cattle), small mammals (rabbit), birds (chicken, goose, duck), fish (eel, carp, goldfish)
• Symbionts include:
  • The dog, initially used for hunting, and now used to round up domesticated prey (sheepdogs), scent tracks (hounds), course prey (greyhounds), find and carry prey (retrievers), kill vermin (terriers), guard (mastiff), heat (hairless dog), carry messages, detect mines, rescue victims, etc.
  • The cormorant, used as a fish hunting companion.
  • Small carnivores (cat, ferret, mongoose), used as rodent killers.
  • Horses, onagers, donkeys, cattle, yak, reindeers, camels, llamas, elephants used as beasts of burden.
  • Cattle and goats, sheep and alpaca, chicken and ducks, bees, silk-moths as sources of produce (milk, wool, eggs, honey, silk).
  • Pigeons as message carriers.
  • Siamese fighting fish and fighting cocks as gambling devices.
  • Guinea-pigs and white rats for laboratory experiments.
• Competitors (primates, large carnivores) have been ruthlessly eliminated.
• Parasites have seen their grip dwindle with medical progress.
• Predators (snakes, big cats, wild dogs, crocodiles, sharks, prey birds) are also on the way out.
• Animals have also been used as symbols:
  • The favorite animals of children (e.g., chimps, monkeys, horses, bushbabies, pandas, bears, elephants, lions, dogs, giraffes) tend to be mammals, with anthropomorphic features (e.g., hair, flat face, facial expressions, ability to manipulate objects, rather vertical postures). Younger children tend to prefer bigger animals (parent substitutes), while older children tend to prefer smaller ones (symbolic child). The exception is the horse, whose popularity peaks with the onset of puberty, especially for girls.
  • The most disliked animals (e.g., snake, spider, crocodile, lion, rat, skunk, gorilla, rhino, hippo, tiger) are dangerous, and most lack anthropomorphic features. Snake hatred is common with chimps. Spider hatred shows a dramatic rise from puberty for girls, probably as a symbol of body hair.
  • There are seven stages of reactions to animals:
    • Infantile phase: big mammals employed as parent symbols.
    • Infantile-parental phase: small pets used as child substitutes.
    • Objective pre-adult phase: bugs, butterflies and aquaria used to satisfy exploratory interests.
    • Young adult phase: other animals lose ground compared to members of the opposite sex of our own species.
    • Adult parental phase: animals used as pets for our children.
    • Post-parental phase: animals used as child-substitutes.
    • Senile phase: interest in animal conservation as a symbol of our own impending doom.

Conclusion

• We should not assume that the flexibility, extraordinary achievements, and dominance of our species will shield us from our biological nature nor from extinction.
• Despite our technological advances and lofty self-conceits, we are still humble animals, subject to the basic laws of animal behavior. We stand a much better chance of survival if we recognize and submit to our biological restrictions.