Desmond Morris, the renowned zoologist and author of 'The Naked Ape,' has passed away at the age of 98. His son confirmed his death on April 20, highlighting Morris's legacy as a man of exploration and creativity.
Key points
Desmond Morris died at age 98
He authored 'The Naked Ape' in 1967
Morris was also a surrealist painter
His son confirmed his death on April 20
Morris was known for his exploration and creativity
Mentioned in this story
Desmond MorrisPhilip LarkinJason Morris
Desmond Morris, the zoologist, author, artist and television presenter, has died aged 98.
Morris was best known for his book, The Naked Ape, which was published in 1967. It framed modern humans as still being fundamentally ape-like despite our technological advances and evolution.
He was also a surrealist painter and exhibited his work around the world alongside artists such as Joan Miró.
Morris's son Jason confirmed his death on 20 April, calling his father "a great man and an even better father and grandfather", who lived "a lifetime of exploration, curiosity and creativity".
"Sexual intercourse began," wrote Philip Larkin, "in 1963... between the end of the [Lady] Chatterley['s Lover] ban and the Beatles' first LP."
In the years that followed the sexual revolution, a slew of books - in their different ways - found eager readers among the freshly liberated.
There was Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex and - in the Summer of Love of 1967 itself - Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape.
He wrote it in four frenetic weeks. It explained our habits and rituals, with the naughtiness of "naked" and the Darwinian thrill of "ape".
It was mankind seen through the eyes of a zoologist - not an anthropologist. It framed our behaviour in the context of evolution - not culture.
As a thesis, it was hotly contested, but it was wildly popular and had lasting influence.
It was a bible of human actions for the Age of Aquarius, and plumbed for insight into the practice of modern sex.
Desmond John Morris was born on 24 January 1928 in the village of Purton, near Swindon. As a child, he watched his father die slowly of wounds received in World War One.
It filled the young Desmond with hatred for what humans did to each other.
He cut himself off from mankind at the family lake, carefully observing the animals, fish and waterfowl.
At Birmingham University, he studied zoology but refused to do animal experiments. He discovered a new approach - called "ethology" - which prized objective study of their behaviour instead.
His doctoral thesis involved years watching the aggressive mating dance of the 10-spined stickleback.
Granada found in him a natural broadcaster - the man to take on the mighty David Attenborough's natural history shows on the BBC.
A studio was built inside London Zoo itself, which irritated Attenborough, who thought he had a relationship with the zoo.
But feelings soon thawed and the two great TV interpreters of animal behaviour eventually became friends.
Morris became the zoo's curator of mammals.
He launched an attempt to breed pandas in captivity but, to his despair, London's Chi Chi repeatedly spurned the attentions of Moscow's An An.
Reared in isolation, she saw herself as human and was not interested in a bear.
Q&A
What was Desmond Morris known for?
Desmond Morris was best known for his book 'The Naked Ape,' which explored human behavior from a zoological perspective.
When did Desmond Morris die?
Desmond Morris died on April 20, 2023, at the age of 98.
What other contributions did Desmond Morris make besides writing?
In addition to his writing, Desmond Morris was a surrealist painter and television presenter, exhibiting his artwork globally.
Who confirmed Desmond Morris's death?
Morris's son, Jason, confirmed his father's death, describing him as a great man and an even better father and grandfather.
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A talented artist, the young Morris had spent his national service lecturing soldiers in fine arts and had exhibited surrealist paintings alongside Joan Miró.
Now, he experimented with animal concepts of aesthetics, giving a paintbrush to a chimp called Congo.
It proved, he said, artistic expression was not exclusively human in origin.
It delighted Picasso, who thereafter took delight in biting those who came to see him. The paintings later sold for thousands.
At a party, Morris then met publisher Tom Maschler, and pitched him the book that would change his life.
It would explain, said Morris:
why humans were the only hairless ape in the world
why man was proud of having the largest brain but hid his relatively huge penis
why women's breasts were biologically designed as much for attracting partners as producing milk
Maschler was transfixed.
He sent Morris a monthly telegram for years, begging him to write it. It was finally done in a month of frantic scribbling and, when complete, caused eyes to pop.
The Naked Ape was an overnight sensation, eventually selling 20 million copies.
It applied Darwinian logic to human activity - including fighting, feeding, comfort and sex.
Copulation, Morris claimed, was not mainly about producing children. It was, he insisted, more to do with cementing the pair bond "by providing mutual reward for sexual partners".
We were, he said, "a very sexy ape".
He had taken a job running the Institute of Contemporary Arts but, now fabulously wealthy, he quit.
He ignored his mother's advice to bank the money, bought a 27-room villa in the Mediterranean and thoroughly enjoyed himself - sailing in summer and writing in winter.
Back home, his book was proving controversial.
Some disliked his dismissal of religion as a biological tendency to submit to an alpha male.
Feminists were furious with his portrayal of men as "risk-taking" hunter-gatherers who drove human evolution, while women sat at home in the cave.
For many, human beings have self-consciousness and language, which elevates Homo sapiens.
There was more to us, they said, than you could tell by watching the other 192 species of ape.
But Morris was undeterred.
He wrote The Human Zoo and Intimate Behaviour, in Malta, and then became fascinated by the expressive body language of the people of the Mediterranean.
He decided to write about the meanings hidden in the way people waved their arms and gesticulated to make a point.
"You look at people the way a bird-watcher looks at birds," said a friend. "Yes," said Morris, "you could call me a man-watcher."
It took him three years to do the research for his new book and TV programme on the subject.
Having done his best to spend his fortune, Morris returned to Oxford as a research fellow and travelled the world applying his techniques.
Dragged to football matches by his son, Morris became fascinated by the passion of the fans on the terraces.
He wrote about the rituals of chanting and synchronised clapping with his customary scientific insight. This was more than just sport, he felt; it was a form of male arena display.
He continued to paint too, filling his cottage with surrealist depictions of life-forms he called "biomorphs".
Many appeared to be engaged in complex rituals with sexual motives - the abstract expression of the primeval desires he was convinced had shaped mankind.
Morris branched out in to light entertainment with The Animal Roadshow and Animal Country, alongside Sarah Kennedy.
He exhibited his paintings in London, Amsterdam and Brussels, and wrote popular books on watching everything from babies to cats.
The TV production company Endemol approached him with an idea for a new reality series, Big Brother.
Morris was initially attracted to watching captive human interaction on such an industrial scale but, put off by the game-show element, he turned them down.
"Silly me," he later said.
In 1994 - nearly 30 years after The Naked Ape was published - Morris made the TV series he should have made to accompany it.
The Human Animal was lavishly filmed in exotic locations, showing diverse customs and suggesting their common biological roots.
In deference to his many critics, the BBC added a rider to the title - implying that this was not scientific mainstream thinking but, instead, "a personal view".
At the end of the first episode, Morris spoke directly to them. "I've sometimes been accused of degrading mankind, or insulting human dignity, of making man beastly," he said.
"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."
In truth, the objections went further than that.
Many disputed his claim that only man had left the ancient cave to hunt for animals, leaving him with the "risk-taking" genes that made men better at business and art than women.
And for every fellow scientist that found him inspiring, others - in the words of the writer Adam Rutherford - saw his work as "salacious guesswork and erotic fantasy".
Men might find breasts attractive, Rutherford complained, but that did not mean that was their purpose.
Science moves on. A great deal more is now known about genes and genetics than anyone could guess in 1967.
Although, when he was invited to update the Naked Ape, Morris stubbornly updated the population of the Earth from three billion to six billion - and left it at that.
For all these objections, Desmond Morris will be remembered as a tremendous populariser of science - a man who helped place humans in the scheme of nature on planet Earth.
