You are in the Special Features section - Desmond Morris, Zoo Time, The Naked Ape, The Naked Woman, The Naked Man

Digger talks to Zoologist, people-watcher, author and TV presenter Desmond Morris. 

 

Desmond Morris

 

 

Desmond Morris is probably best known as a zoological TV presenter and a people watcher. He first became familiar with the British public via Zoo Time. After many specialist book publications, his book The Naked Ape - a zoologist's study of the human animal, became a huge international popular success and brought body language and people watching to the world's attention. A sequel, The Human Zoo, was followed by a string of titles over the years, including Intimate Behaviour, Manwatching and The Naked Woman. His latest book, The Naked Man, is due for release in January 2009.

 

 

As well as being successful in the fields of zoology, writing and presentation, Desmond Morris is also a keen and successful surrealist artist with a number of exhibitions to his credit.

Desmond kindly agreed to answer some questions for Digger at www.retrosellers.com 

Some images courtesy of and © copyright www.rexfeatures.com

 

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Desmond on Zoo Time

 

 

 

Digger: Can you tell us what attracted you to Zoology?

Desmond: My great grandfather was a Victorian naturalist and when I was a small boy I came across his old brass microscope in a corner of the attic and became fascinated by the teeming world that I discovered with it. With my eye to the lens I disappeared down the tube of the microscope like Alice descending the rabbit hole. Once I was in that strange other world I could forget World War II that was raging around me.

Digger: How primitive were those early days on TV in the 50s and 60s in production terms?

Desmond: When I first started on TV in 1956 the cameramen were still wearing suits and ties. A TV camera was about the size of a small car. There were no zoom lenses. Everything was live because there was no video tape in those days. It was a huge challenge but great fun. ITV had just started and as we were the newcomers we went all-out to make an impact. I was always being bitten by animals but as everything was in black and white nobody noticed the blood. The important thing for me was that presenting a TV programme each week for eleven years enabled me to tell an audience of two million something about the incredibly exciting facts of animal life.

Digger: Recently scientists said that they might be able to produce mammoths from frozen bits of DNA in hairs found in ice. What are your views on science's ability to clone cells, organs and even whole creatures? Is this playing God and should we draw the line to avoid a scenario such as the Nazis were striving to achieve?

Desmond: A brilliant surgeon has operated on my eyes so that I now have the crystal clear vision of a teenager. But the rest of my body is beginning to creak a bit. I asked him if he could manage a whole body transplant, but sadly he said 'not yet'. I think cloning and all the other new developments in science are absolutely brilliant. Please don't bring God and the Nazis into this. They have nothing to do with it. Scientific research has provided us with much of what is good about modern life. Religion and politics repeatedly mess things up, spawning wars, hatred and poverty. But science still manages to give us so many of the wonderful aspects of our daily existence.

Digger: What have been your landmark achievements and what would you still like to accomplish?

Desmond: I had hoped to persuade people that they are animals, members of a fascinating, amazing species of ape, but I seem to have failed because the dark forces of religious superstition are still with us.

Digger: Communication channels have changed a huge amount in your lifetime with the development of satellite, Internet, mobile phones and so on. Has fundamental human behaviour and communication changed very much?

Desmond: Evolution works slowly. Beneath our modern clothes we are still much the same as our splendid prehistoric ancestors. All that the new communication systems have done is to give us back the ability to make contact with the other members of our tribe. The snag is that our tribe is now 6,000 million strong, so we need all the help we can get.

Digger: Where do you think nature, the earth and mankind are headed?

Desmond: Humans have one fatal flaw. They seem to be unable to control their population growth. The human population has doubled in the last forty years and will do so again, only even quicker this time. Eventually we will exhaust the planet, unless we can control our breeding rate like other animals.

Digger: Who would be at your ideal dinner party of guests, living or dead, real or fictional? And why?

Desmond: Your question is far too broad, but of the people I have known, I would choose Francis Bacon, Marlon Brando, John Lennon, Spike Milligan and Dylan Thomas. Because they are the most outrageously inventive, idiosyncratic, rebellious individuals I have encountered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digger: With our veneer of civilisation, how long does it take for us to revert back to our basic animal instincts and behaviours?

Desmond: Fortunately civilization has not completely eroded our basic animal instincts which include such things as exploring the world we live in, falling in love and caring for our young.

Digger: One of my favourite artists is Dali and works is Duchamp's Mona Lisa shaved. What is it about Surrealism that you enjoy?

Desmond: The chance to let my imagination run riot. In my scientific work I have to be totally objective, so it is a great release to be totally subjective in my studio.

Digger: How valuable can gestures be in interpreting what is going on in someone's head? How difficult is it to do this when talking to someone on the 'phone or on the Internet and do you have any clues, cues or tricks to make non-visual communication easier?

Desmond: My book PEOPLE-WATCHING is over 500 pages long. The answers are all in there! Computers and telephones are great for communicating factual information, but if we want to communicate our personal feelings, face to face encounters are always going to be needed.

Digger: Can you tell us about your new book?

Desmond: THE NAKED MAN is a book that examines what it is to be a human male, starting with the hair and ending with the feet, and not forgetting all the interesting bits in between.

Digger: Please describe yourself in a sentence.

Desmond: An eternal student.

Digger: What makes you laugh, what make you sad, what makes you angry and what makes you hopeful?

Desmond: Snobbery makes me laugh, politics makes me sad, religion makes me angry, but the playful spirit of humanity makes me hopeful.

Digger: What projects do you have lined-up for the future?

Desmond: So far in my life I have visited 95 different countries all around the world. It is my schoolboy ambition to reach 100 before I die, which statistically should be very soon. So I don't have much time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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