The Naked Ape and Me

So, as I mentioned somewhere in an earlier post, I am rereading The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris and either finding new tidbits of knowledge or re-finding them (it has been 39 years since I last read it and the memory banks are full of cobwebs), I am not sure which.

Those of you who are not adherents to the Theory of Evolution will possibly not like the read. You have to be willing to accept the premise that chimpanzees, monkeys, and apes are all distant cousins of Man. Or, at least, willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a book. It's not that Mr. Morris is such a great author but he does have a way of comparing human and animal behavior that is intriguing and gives one pause. And I like to pause.

When I read something like this, analysis of human behavior, I tend to examine my own behavior and behavior I have observed. We are a communal animal, we form family units, cliques (small tribes), communities (large tribes), and nations (really large tribes). Within each of these, we follow certain rules of behavior for interactions. Morris does a very good job of reducing our rules of etiquette to simple instinctual behavior patterns. These patterns have some value in allowing us to flourish, or at least avoid constant conflict.

One of these behavior patterns is called "grooming" when it is applied to animals. It means the interaction between two or more animals wherein the fur is examined and cleaned of detritus, various parasites, and the bits of dirt which accumulate. This grooming serves a couple of purposes; the obvious cleaning which helps keep the body healthy and the less obvious social comfort of contact with another of the community.

Though we have little fur to groom, we also perform these rituals. Of course, they are not easily recognizable as such because we have been conditioned to see them in a different way. Morris looks at them from a zoologist's perspective and sees the similarities with our simian cousins. Instead of the social grooming the chimps do, we have light conversations where we compliment each other on our choice of, or taste in, clothes. Our "fur" grooming has been specialized and turned over to barbers and hair stylists (see my post on the barber shop). But the purpose of social grooming is still to maintain cohesiveness of the group, maintain the connections between members.


This social grooming is much more marked among family members and, there, still closely resembles the rituals of the other primates. Watch a mother with her child sometime, especially a small child. Close friends often engage in this. The sharing of clothes, the inspection of each other before entering a gathering (like a party or dance or nightclub), girls who do each others' hair, or share makeup tips. It seems more pronounced, to me, in the female of our species but men do it also... only without the touching (except for the "butt slap", the "chest bump", the high and low "fives" after some well performed activity and, of course, the routine handshake). These rituals establish or clarify a hierarchy within our groupings as well and this helps maintain an order.

The process of becoming civilized has masked these rituals so that we do not think of them as instinctual behaviors. Morris makes you reconsider this. He makes you begin to wonder just how advanced we are as animals. Maybe we aren't so different after all.

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