The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Classic Study of the Urban Animal (Kodansha Globe)

Fantastic, life-changing book! You need to read this now!

Morris has shared amazing insights on human nature lifted from primal existence lifted from simple living to the hive of our cities. I found gold in every chapter, but the book grows stronger toward the final chapters: "The Stimulus Struggle" and the "Childlike Adult". His few missteps—e.g., Christian belief in the soul was not the origin of animal abuse—are overwhelmed by his insights, many of which should guide parents as well as city planners. A masterful work.

In this book, Desmond Morris continues his look at humans from a zoologist's point of view. This time he looks at how the naked ape responds to the complex situation they have developed for themselves ... civilisation. From tribes to super-tribes, bringing with it the issue of status to super-status, Desmond Morris builds a compelling position about how we are constantly trying to fine tune our lives as we struggle with the contrast and balance between our evolutionary psychology/biology and the environment in which we have developed for ourselves.I particularly enjoyed the chapters on `In-Groups and Out-Groups,' `The Stimulus Struggle' and the `Childlike Adult.' There is some great stuff in there.It was also very interesting to read it again considering Desmond Morris wrote it in 1969 and over 30 years later his analysis still largely seems to hold. This seems to only further support his thesis that 10,000 years of civilisation is a small percentage of our biological evolution of (depends how you define it) between 200,000 and 4-8 million years.

Like Desmond Morris's _The Naked Ape_, this book is an old friend of mine. The second volume in his well-known trilogy (the third is _Intimate Behavior_), this one makes a compelling case that modern cities are less like "jungles" and more like zoos.Other animals, Morris says, don't behave in the wild the way humans do in cities. But the sort of erratic violence and heightened self-stimulation in which we find modern humans engaging _does_ have a counterpart in the rest of the animal world: animals do act that way . . . in zoos.Essentially, Morris's claim is that many millions of years of evolution have equipped us for life in small communities in which everybody knows everybody else and there's enough room for us to move around without klonking into each other all the time. We are not, in short, adapted to the modern metropolis, and that's why "city folk" are so danged weird. And our misattribution of our maladaptive behavior actually gives the jungle an undeserved bad name.So what's a naked ape to do? I don't know that the intervening years since this book was first published have generated a whole lot of solutions. I guess that's, um, life in the big city.But as with so many problems, just being aware of the problem is at least half the solution. As with Morris's other books (especially _The Naked Ape_), it's profoundly helpful to step back and see ourselves as one biological species among others (whether or not that's _all_ we are).Okay, maybe that's not all we are; maybe the fact that we _can_ thus step back from ourselves is the single most important fact about our species. If so, that makes this book more valuable, not less.So think of this book (and Morris's others) as a way to give your "I" a little distance on your "me," if you know what I mean. And yes, that does mean that I'm recommending a couple of books on evolutionary anthropology as helpful to your spirituality.

I appreciate the fact that the writer puts in layman's terms all of the fascinating science behind the pros and cons of the new human condition: namely living in large cities with 10s of thousands of people I don't know

I read the Naked Ape and was impressed beyond words so I read this immediately after that. This guy knows what’s up and his writing style just flows. Easy to read understand and remember.His feet firmly on the ground and I love that. No theoretical nonsense. No guesses all objectively observed and observable facts. Love it. The human animal…what a fascinating, impressive, beautiful, creative, destructive mess.

Morris provides a somewhat challenging analysis. On his base, that the human is (if a special) just an animal, his logic is firm. A good read starting with the beginning of the human animal in its natural habitat as hunter/gatherers , becoming farmers and finally living in the human zoo ( cities as they are like zoos overpopulated and not equal to the natural widespread area of living for small tribes). His comparison between animal behavior only ( at least mostly) just seen in zoo confinements to human behavior seem logical and good argued. His theses that humans mostly act on the basis of dominance/ (sub-)tribe status seems from his perspective as an zoologist legitimate. However he paints the painting from one perspective and the complexity of the world might have just more facets.

The human zoo is an extremely thought-provoking book. I love how desmond morris links the behaviours of animals to humans in such a concise way. I also love how Morris goes back in time and informs us about what we were like when we existed in small tribes.

I read this book in my teens. It taught me a lot about people. I wanted my son to learn from it too.

Human behaviour through the eyes of a zoologist. Good read.

In some aspects it is outdated, but in general it is worth reading book and eye opening