THE NAKED APE

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printing have? It may, for example, explain why we insist on locating feelings of love in the heart rather than the head. As the song says: 'You gotta have heart 1 ' It may also explain why mothers rock their babies to lull them to sleep. The rocking motion is carried on at about the same speed as the heart-beat, and once again it probably 'reminds' the infants of the rhythmic sensations they became so familiar with inside the womb, as the great heart of the mother pumped and thumped away above them. Nor does it stop there. Right into adult life the phenomenon seems to stay with us. We rock with anguish. We rock back and forth on our feet when we are in a state of conflict. The next time you see a lecturer or an after-dinner speaker swaying rhythmically froni side to side, check his speed for heart-beat time. His discomfort at having to face an audience leads him to perform the most comforting movements his body can offer in the somewhat limited circumstances; and so he switches on the old familiar beat of the womb. Wherever you find insecurity, you are liable to find the comforting heart-beat rhythm in one kind of disguise or another. It is no accident that most folk music and dancing has a syncopated rhythm. Here again the sounds and movements take the performers back to the safe world of the womb. It is no accident that teenage music has been called 'rock music'. More recently it has adopted an even more revealing name-it is now called 'beat music'. And what are they singing about? 'My heart is broken', 'You gave your heart to another', or 'My heart belongs to you'. Fascinating as this subject is, we must not stray too far from the original question of parental behaviour. Up to this point we have been looking at the mother's behaviour towards the child. We have followed her through the dramatic moments of birth, watched her feeding the child, holding it and comforting it. Now we must turn to the baby itself and study it as it grows. The average weight of a baby at birth is just over seven pounds, which is slightly more than one-twentieth the weight of the average parent. Growth is very 96
apid during the first two years of life and remains reasonably fast throughout the following four years. At the age of six, however, it slows down considerably. This phase of gradual growth continues until eleven in boys and until ten in girls. Then, at puberty, it puts on another spurt. Rapid growth is seen again from eleven until seventeen in boys and from ten until fifteen in girls. Because of their slightly earlier puberty, girls tend to outstrip boys between the eleventh and fourteenth years, but then the boys pass them again and stay in front from that point on. Body growth tends to end for girls at around nineteen, and for boys much later, at about twenty-five. The first teeth usually appear around the sixth or seventh month, and the full set of milk teeth is usually complete by the end of the second year or the middle of the third. The permanent teeth erupt in the sixth year, but the final molars-the wisdom teeth-do not usually appear until about the nineteenth. Newborn infants send a great deal of time sleeping. It is usually claimed that they only awaken for about two hours a day during the first few weeks, but this is not the case. They are sleepy, but not that sleepy. Careful studies have revealed that the average time spent sleeping during the first three days of life is i6-6 hours out of every 24. Individuals varied a great deal, however, the sleepiest averaging xg hours out of 24, and the most wide-awake a mere io-5. During childhood the sleeping-to-waking ratio gradually shrinks until, by the time the adult stage has been reached, the original sixteen-hour average has been reduced to half. Some adults vary considerably from this typical eight-hour average however. Two out of every hundred require only five hours and another two need as much as ten hours. Adult females, incidentally, have an average sleep-period that is slightly longer than that of adult males. The sixteen-hour quota of daily sleep at birth does not occur in one long nocturnal session, it is broken up into a number of short periods scattered throughout the twenty-four hours. Even from birth, however, there is a slight tendency to sleep more at night than in the day. Gradually, as the weeks pass, one of the nocturnal 97
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THE NAKED APE by Desmond Morris A B
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is intend
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INTRODUCTION THERE are one hundred
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some respect. If they were healthy,
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CHAPTER ONE ORIGINS THERE is a labe
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we put it, it looks out of place. E
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The primate group, to which our nak
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Faced with a new environment, our a
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complex manoeuvres could be develop
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The brightest stars in the carnivor
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a pack of African hunting dogs it i
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the night, but the contrast is neve
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in the dirt of the den or lair. Aft
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was a process of differential infan
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eating it, each have their own part
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Male and female hunting apes had to
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feature was its naked skin, which l
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home bases, its dens became heavily
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vital missing links in our ancient
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first appears. A great deal will de
Page 41 and 42: CHAPTER TWO SEX SEXUALLY the naked
Page 43 and 44: phase, privacy is sought and the su
Page 45 and 46: summatory act of sperm ejaculation
Page 47 and 48: the arteries pumping blood into the
Page 49 and 50: activity. Once the climax has been
Page 51 and 52: old females will have experienced o
Page 53 and 54: stay put and mind the babies while
Page 55 and 56: -the female remains responsive to t
Page 57 and 58: mucous surfaces permanently exposed
Page 59 and 60: areas in other animals where there
Page 61 and 62: Any body relationship, they feel, s
Page 63 and 64: At some point, back in our ancestry
Page 65 and 66: sexual contacts. In this particular
Page 67 and 68: This may also explain why the male
Page 69 and 70: lengths to render her as sexually r
Page 71 and 72: ised his sex life. The contemporary
Page 73 and 74: apology being proportional to the d
Page 75 and 76: enlarges it, imitating in this way
Page 77 and 78: ituation where the female is produc
Page 79 and 80: and avoids being attacked. A subord
Page 81 and 82: object lacking these signals. Secon
Page 83 and 84: is that the prolonged period of inf
Page 85 and 86: on the fundamental sexual structure
Page 87 and 88: CHAPTER THREE REARING THE burden of
Page 89 and 90: is not enough for the infant's lips
Page 91: mother, either instinctively or by
Page 95 and 96: onwards. It may even clasp on to he
Page 97 and 98: unlike the verbal signals, they eme
Page 99 and 100: mother's face and to distinguish he
Page 101 and 102: oth frighteningly odd and at the sa
Page 103 and 104: friendly, but if we greet them by l
Page 105 and 106: We develop the vital bond of attach
Page 107 and 108: andom and unco-ordinated. The cryin
Page 109 and 110: CHAPTER FOUR EXPLORATION ALL mammal
Page 111 and 112: But the reverse is actually the cas
Page 113 and 114: are combined, one with another, to
Page 115 and 116: equired no reward-it was its own re
Page 117 and 118: Writing, a formalised offshoot of p
Page 119 and 120: and clothing, in furniture and cars
Page 121 and 122: contacts immensely difficult and wi
Page 123 and 124: epeatedly bite themselves, or pull
Page 125 and 126: on the other hand, of vital signifi
Page 127 and 128: in respiratory activity. Breathing
Page 129 and 130: under the extreme conditions of agg
Page 131 and 132: formalised into rhythmic twistings
Page 133 and 134: sdditional energy on it, and it is
Page 135 and 136: the grooming itself. Monkeys make g
Page 137 and 138: signal. (With the arm bent and held
Page 139 and 140: intensities of it are expressed in
Page 141 and 142: mechanisms. Many moths have a pair
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largely confined now to a form of s
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such a situation can be seen to per
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the policeman into a position of im
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attacker and his enemy, and it is t
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intelligence that must get us out.
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frequent accompaniment of wailing o
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of the `pomp and circumstance' will
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in profusion. This is usually expla
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personal acquaintances listed there
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grounds. It is a predominantly masc
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elements of challenge, luck and ris
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Another interpretation is that we h
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If they appeal to our old primate w
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disposal, we might be expected to r
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giving an impression of great conce
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the female can then fondle it and c
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is it aesthetically pleasing. Its f
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significance of the hair. In its re
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co-operativeness, specialised groom
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it is a strong dose of security tha
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If the environment becomes too cold
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CHAPTER EIGHT ANIMALS UP to this po
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prey-predator relationship, since i
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substitute space-traveller. No othe
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interferes with the efficient runni
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point of view, are fully justified
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small objects (chimpanzee, monkey,
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The unexpected discovery here is th
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on its back. It must be stressed he
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This cannot be explained solely on
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spiders being nasty, hairy things.
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symbolically, scientifically or aes
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tendencies; that if we have to beco
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Heart-beat response: Salk, 1966. Gr
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BIBLIOGRAPHY AMBROSE, J. A., `The s
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MILES, W. R., 'Chimpanzee behaviour
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Mimikry der Primaten'. Die Naturwis
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THE NAKED APE

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