The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
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Sunday Times
Original, provocative and brilliantly entertaining. It’s the sort of book that changes people’s lives
Sunday Times
Original, provocative and brilliantly entertaining. It's the sort of book that changes peoples lives.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book about the human condition.,
By
This review is from: The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (Paperback)
A truly enlightening account of the human condition. Using a scientific approach, refering to Darwinian theory, Desmond Morris explains many of the physiological and phsychological characteristics of human beings. This book seems to hit the nail on the head and although written over 30 years ago, still makes perfect sense.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The benchmark for popular anthropology,
By Eugene Rodrique (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (Paperback)
The Naked Ape covers a vast amount of natural science and psychology yet still remains compelling to read. Morris really hits the nail on the head even 30 years later. This study, the first popular one studying the human as an animal species shows us in a completely new light. You certainly never look at mankind in the same light again; so much of our seemingly bizarre behaviour is explained here.Although I would recommend Morris' The Human Zoo over this book as it is more thorough, the Naked Ape is a great introduction to anthropology.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading - critically,
By
This review is from: The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (Paperback)
I generally liked this book and I definitely recommend it for its view of humans as just another species. However, in my view it has two weaknesses.
Firstly, the author has a tendency to descend to political and social commentary, which tends to come across as a bit dated at times. In some cases it feels more like a view into the culture of 1967 than any profound insight into human nature. For example, he asserts that the "psychological damage" done to our territorial nature by "rows of uniformly repeated, identical houses" is "incalculable" - surely a social comment, not a scientific view. Nuclear war and population growth are mentioned more than once as real concerns - again, his analysis is a reflection of the time and place that the book was written. (He may well be right about his theories of course, and probably is in many places - it's just quite subjective). Secondly, quite a lot of the book reads like a "just so" story. <Just So Stories (Wordsworth's Children's Classics)>. E.g. when discussing how humans feed, he describes how we like a few well-spaced meals rather than continual grazing. This is held as an example of our carnivorous ancestry. On the next page however, he describes how we do sometimes eat (sweet) inter-meal snacks. This doesn't present any problems though: hey presto! in this case we do it because of our primate ancestry. If you follow the same line of reasoning, you could conclude that we like sunbathing because of our reptile ancestry. The chapter on animals seems the worst in this respect, sometimes almost laughably so. For example, he analyses, in detail, the results of a survey of eighty thousand young children who voted for their most and least favourite animals. From the list of the top ten favourites (with chimps and monkeys in the top two slots), he concludes that there's a strong bias toward preferring anthropomorphic features. Maybe. However, the list also includes horses, elephants, lions and giraffes; and I find it hard to see how these particular species are particularly more anthropomorphic than any others. (He decides elephants are popular because they have trunks - just so). However, regardless of the criticisms above, I would still recommend the book as genuinely interesting and full of thought-provoking ideas - but I suggest you read it with a skeptical eye open.
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