The Naked Ape

Read The Naked Ape for Free Online

Book: Read The Naked Ape for Free Online
Authors: Desmond Morris
Tags: Non-Fiction, Anthropology, Zoology
expression and one could not be damped down by satisfying another. If we examine—as we shall be doing in a later chapter—the feeding behaviour of present-day naked apes, we shall see that there are plenty of indications that something like this did occur.
    In addition to becoming a biological (as opposed to a cultural) killer, the hunting ape also had to modify the timing arrangements of his eating behaviour. Minute by minute snacks were out and big, spaced meals were in. Food storage was practised. A basic tendency to return to a fixed home base had to be built in to the behavioural system. Orientation and homing abilities had to be improved. Defecation had to become a spatially organized pattern of behaviour, a private (carnivore) activity instead of a communal (primate) one.
    I mentioned earlier that one outcome of using a fixed home base is that it makes parasitisation by fleas possible. I also said that carnivores have fleas, but primates do not. If the hunting ape was unique amongst primates in having a fixed base, then we would also expect him to break the primate rule concerning fleas, and this certainly seems to be the case. We know that today our species is parasitised by these insects and that we have our own special kind of flea—one that belongs to a different species from other fleas, one that has evolved with us. If it had sufficient time to develop into a new species, then it must have been with us for a very long while indeed, long enough to have been an unwelcome companion right back in our earliest hunting-ape days.
    Socially the hunting ape had to increase his urge to communicate and to co-operate with his fellows. Facial expressions and vocalisations had to become more complicated. With the new weapons to hand, he had to develop powerful signals that would inhibit attacks within the social group. On the other hand, with a fixed home base to defend, he had to develop stronger aggressive responses to members of rival groups.
    Because of the demands of his new way of life, he had to reduce his powerful primate urge never to leave the main body of the group.
    As part of his new-found co-operativeness and because of the erratic nature of the food supply, he had to begin to share out his food. Like the paternal wolves mentioned earlier, the hunting ape males also had to carry food supplies home for the nursing females and their slowly growing young. Paternal behaviour of this kind had to be a new development, for the general rule is that virtually all parental care comes from the mother. (It is only a wise primate, like our hunting ape, that knows its own father.)
    Because of the extremely long period of dependency of the young and the heavy demands made by them, the females found themselves almost perpetual) confined to the home base. In this respect the hunting ape’s new way of life threw up a special problem, one that it did not share with the typical ‘pure’ carnivores: the role of the sexes had to become more distinct. The hunting parties, unlike those of the ‘pure’ carnivores, had to become all-male groups. If anything was going to go against the primate grain, it was this. For a virile primate male to go off on a feeding trip and leave his females unprotected from the advances of any other males that might happen to come by, was unheard of. No amount of cultural training could put this right. This was something that demanded a major shift in social behaviour.
    The answer was the development of a pair-bond. Male and female hunting apes had to fall in love and remain faithful to one another. This is a common tendency in many other groups of animals, but is rare amongst primates. It solved three problems in one stroke. It meant that the females remained bonded to their individual males and faithful to them while they were away on the hunt. It meant that serious sexual rivalries between the males were reduced. This aided their developing co-operativeness. If they were to hunt together

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