> Skip to content
  • Published: 31 December 1994
  • ISBN: 9780099482017
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $34.00

The Naked Ape

A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal




'Original, provocative and brilliantly entertaining. It's the sort of book that changes people's lives' Sunday Times

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

Here is the Naked Ape at his most primal - in love, at work, at war. Meet man as he really is: relative to the apes, stripped of his veneer as we see him courting, making love, sleeping, socialising, grooming, playing.

Zoologist Desmond Morris's classic 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.

'Original, provocative and brilliantly entertaining. It's the sort of book that changes people's lives' Sunday Times

  • Published: 31 December 1994
  • ISBN: 9780099482017
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $34.00

About the author

Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris was born in 1928. Educated at Birmingham and Oxford universities, he became the Curator of Mammals at London Zoo in 1959, a post he held for eight years. In 1967 he published The Naked Ape which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and has changed the way we view our own species forever. An accomplished artist, tv presenter, film maker and writer, Desmond Morris's books have been published in over thirty-six countries.

Also by Desmond Morris

See all

Praise for The Naked Ape

Readable, surprising and provocative

The Times

I really enjoyed The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. It was published in 1967 and is often a very amusing zoological perspective on human beings. The chapter on sex is hilarious

KT Tunstall, Independent

Stimulating

Arthur Koestler

Thought-provoking...Morris has introduced some novel and challenging ideas

Natural History

Fascinating

Sunday Times

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite so slowly… I didn’t want to miss a beat in what became an intoxicating series of revelations about not only my species but apparently about me, too. I’d never experienced a book that reached out to the reader in such a way and even now, this still holds true for The Naked Ape in that you can’t help but examine where (or even if) you fit in with Morris’s observations.

Ben Garrod, Observer

Original, provocative and brilliantly entertaining. It's the sort of book that changes people's lives

Sunday Times