Morris, Desmond John (1928– )

English zoologist, a writer and broadcaster on animal and human behaviour. His book The Naked Ape (1967) was a best-seller.

Morris studied at Birmingham and at Oxford, working on animal behaviour under Nikolaas Tinbergen. He became head of the Granada Television and Film Unit at the Zoological Society in London in 1956. Three years later he was appointed Curator of Mammals at London Zoo and from 1967 to 1968 served as director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

In his book The Human Zoo (1969), Morris scrutinizes the society that the naked ape has created for itself. He compares civilized humans with their captive animal counterparts and shows how confined animals seem to demonstrate the same neurotic behaviour patterns as human beings often do in crowded cities. He believes the urban environment of the cities to be the human zoo.