You either loved and admired the late Desmond Morris, or wrote him off as a maverick artist, writer and zoologist often accused of misogyny because of his views on evolution from the perspective of male sexual behaviour, which he treated no different from that of any other animal.

I disagree. In my book, however, he was a unique thinker who arrived at the same conclusion as Charles Darwin, a century apart. And spelled out the understanding of human evolutionary behaviour for millions between the pages of his celebrated (reviled by some) book, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (1967).

The world around him

Lesser known is the fact that apart from being a zoologist extraordinaire, he was an artist with a penchant for surrealism, and a columnist for The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid with a clear right wing, fascist, slant. Launched in 1903, 25 years before Morris was born, the paper was originally written for women readers but transformed itself into a left-leaning, working-class, must-read morning paper for men. Which is when Desmond Morris began writing for it.

Pathologically non-political and fiercely anti-establishment, he summarily rejected both the left and right parties, preferring instead to devote his mind and energy to the study and understanding of human ethology (the science animal behaviour). In the event, he turned out to be a prolific writer with over 60 books to his credit. That said, though his books sold well, like Darwin, Morris too angered the world of academia and the clergy. But what people thought of him meant little to him. Besides, he was much sought after by media owners, readers, listeners and more. A media celebrity, he was also a popular host on Granada TV, and worked with the film department at the Zoological Society of London, where, his films focused on animal behaviour.

On Morris, another pertinent influence was of his peer David Attenborough, who turned 100 today. The pioneering wildlife broadcaster moulded Morris’s belief that complex animal behaviour, including our own, could be communicated simply and compellingly to a general audience.

Defining the self

Many have tried to categorise this giant thinker, but none as effectively as Morris himself who wrote blandly:

“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 earthy 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”.

And help he did! Without worrying a whit about what Britain’s elite, often a self-absorbed constituency, thought of him. With clinical zest he focused much of his writing on such aspects of human behaviour that found commonality with our relatives: monkeys and apes. Often this meant comparing common behavioural traits such as grooming, sleeping, fighting, mating and care of the young. Such in-your-face articulations particularly incensed the well born, stiff upper-lip gentry not accustomed to public exposés of highly personal habits, particularly explicit sexual behaviour, a virtual taboo for most Englishmen.

In his words, Homo sapiens or “…the hunting ape became a territorial ape. His whole sexual, parental and social pattern began to be affected. His old wandering, fruit-plucking way of life was fading rapidly. He had now really left his forest of Eden. He was an ape with responsibilities. He began to worry about the prehistoric equivalent of washing machines and refrigerators. He began to develop the home comforts — fire, food storage, artificial shelters. But this is where we must stop for the moment, for we are moving out of the realms of biology and into the realms of culture.”

Down the years, I have read The Naked Ape several times over and keep returning to it and shaking my head at the sheer accuracy of Morris’s predictions. In his own rapier-like words:

“It is worth re-iterating here that, in this book, we are not concerned with the massive cultural explosions that followed, of which the naked ape of today is so proud — the dramatic progression that led him, in a mere half-million years, from making a fire to making a space-craft. It is an exciting story, but the naked ape is in danger of being dazzled by it all and forgetting that beneath the surface gloss he is still very much a primate. (‘An ape’s an ape, a varlet’s a varlet, though they be clad in silk or scarlet.’)”

Judging Morris today by our social norms is tantamount to misunderstanding his purpose and articulations. In his view, human beings were too clever by half and he warned that by separating ourselves from nature, we would be undermining our own future.

The writer is editor of Sanctuary Asia and founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation.