The Naked Ape
What if your “civilized” life is just a thin veil over primal instincts you can’t escape? In this provocative zoological odyssey, Desmond Morris strips humanity bare, revealing how evolutionary quirks—like hairless skin, oversized brains, and erotic earlobes—shape everything from love to war. But as he dissects monogamy’s origins in hunter-gatherer survival and breasts as sexual signals, a chilling question emerges: Are we masters of our destiny… or puppets of a DNA script written on the savannah?
- Originally Published: 1967
- Publisher : Vintage, 2005
- Genre: Sociology
- Pages: 192
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN-13: 978-0099482017
- Access: Members
Description
The Naked Ape. A book no human animal dare miss reading.
This work has become a benchmark of popular anthropology and psychology.Zoologist Desmond Morris considers humans as being simply another animal species in this classic book first published in 1967. Here is the Naked Ape at his most primal in love, at work, at war. Meet man as he really relative to the apes, stripped of his veneer as we see him courting, making love, sleeping, socializing, grooming, playing.
The Naked Ape takes its place alongside Darwin’s Origin of the Species, presenting man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless, in danger of forgetting his origins. With its penetrating insights on man’s beginnings, sex life, habits and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom, The Naked Ape is a landmark, at once provocative, compelling and timeless.
Praise for The Naked Ape
“The chapter on sex is his best” – Brigid Brophy, The Times
“Superb chapter on exploration” – W.M.S. Russel, Listener
“On the care of the young, he is fascinating.” – Anthony Storr, Sunday Times
“The chapter on origins is perhaps the most stimulating” – Arthur Koestler, Observer
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