The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

by Desmond Morris

  Because the modern super-tribes are in so many ways socially unmanageable, there has been a great tendency for them to fragment. I have already mentioned the way in which specialized pseudo-tribes crystallize inside the main body, as social groups, class groups, professional groups, academic groups, sports groups and so on, reinstating for the urban individual various forms of tribal identity. These groups remain happily enough within the main community, but more drastic splits than this frequently occur. Empires split into independent countries; countries split into selfruling sectors. Despite improved communications, despite increasingly shared aims and common policies, the splits go on. Alliances can be quickly forged under the cohesive pressure of war, but during peace, separations and divisions are the order of the day. When splinter-groups desperately struggle to forge some kind of local identity, it simply means that the cohesive forces of the super-tribe to which they belonged were not strong enough or exciting enough to hold them together.

  The dream of a peaceful, global super-tribe is repeatedly being shattered. It seems as if only an alien threat from another planet would provide the necessary cohesive force, and then only temporarily. It remains to be seen whether, in the future, man’s ingenuity will introduce some new factor into his social existence that will solve the problem. At the moment it appears unlikely.

  There has been a great deal of debate recently concerning the way in which modern mass-communication devices, such as television, are ‘shrinking’ the social surface of the world, creating a global televillage. It has been suggested that this trend will aid the move towards a genuinely international community. Unhappily this is a myth, for the single reason that television, unlike personal social intercourse, is a one-way system. I can listen to and get to know a tele-speaker, but he cannot listen to or get to know me. True, I can learn what he is thinking and doing and this is admittedly a great advantage, broadening my range of social information, but it is no substitute for the two-way relationships of real social contacts.

  Even if startlingly new and at present unimagined advances in mass-communication techniques are made in the years to come, they will continue to be hampered by the bio-social limitations of our species. We are not equipped, like termites, to become willing members of a vast community. We are and probably always will be, at base, simple tribal animals.

  Yet despite this, and despite the spasmodic fragmentations that are constantly occurring around the globe, we are bound to face the fact that the major trend is still to maintain the massive super-tribal levels. While splits are occurring in one part of the world, mergers are developing in another. If the situation remains as unstable today as it has been for centuries, then why do we persist with it? If it is so dangerous, why do we keep it up?

  ' It is far more than just an international power game. There is an intrinsic, biological property of the human animal that obtains deep satisfaction from being thrown into the urban chaos of a super-tribe. That quality is man’s insatiable curiosity, his inventiveness, his intellectual athleticism. The urban turmoil seems to energize this quality. Just as colony-nesting sea-birds are reproductively aroused by massing in dense breeding communities, so the human animal is intellectually aroused by massing in dense urban communities. They are breeding colonies of human ideas. This is the credit side of the story. It keeps the system going despite its many disadvantages.

  We have looked at some of these disadvantages on the social level, but they exist on the personal level as well. Individuals living in a large urban complex suffer from a variety of stresses and strains: noise, polluted air, lack of exercise, cramping of space, overcrowding, over-stimulation and, paradoxically, for some, isolation and boredom.

  You may think that the price the super-tribesman is paying is too high; that a quiet, peaceful, contemplative life would be far preferable. He thinks so, too, of course, but like that physical exercise he is always going to take, he seldom does anything about it. Moving to the suburbs is about as far as he goes. There he can create a pseudo-tribal atmosphere away from the strains of the big city, but come Monday morning and he is dashing back into the fray again. He could move away, but he would miss the excitement, the excitement of the neo-hunter, setting off to capture the biggest game in the biggest and best hunting grounds his environment has to offer.

  On this basis one might expect every great city to be a raging inferno of novelty and inventiveness. Compared with a village it may seem to be so, but it is very far from reaching its exploratory limits. This is because there is a fundamental clash between the cohesive and inventive forces of society. The one tends to keep things steady and therefore repetitive and static. The other strains on to new developments and the inevitable rejection of old patterns. Just as there is a conflict between competition and cooperation, so there is a fight between conformity and innovation. Only in the city does sustained innovation stand a real chance. Only the city is strong enough and secure enough in its amassed conformity to tolerate the disruptive forces of rebellious originality and creativity. The sharp swords of iconoclasm are mere pin-pricks in the giant’s flesh, giving it a pleasant tingling sensation, rousing it from sleep and urging it into action.

  This exploratory excitement, then, with the help of the cohesive forces I have described, is what keeps so many modern city-dwellers voluntarily locked inside their human zoo cages. The exhilarations and challenges of super-tribal living are so great that with a little assistance they can outweigh the enormous dangers and disadvantages. But how do the drawbacks measure up to those of the animal zoo?

  The animal zoo inmate finds itself in solitary confinement, or in an abnormally distorted social group. Alongside, in other cages, it may be able to see or hear other animals but it cannot make any real contact with them. Ironically, the super-social conditions of human urban life can work in much the same way. The loneliness of the city is a well-known hazard. It is easy to become lost in the great impersonal crowd. It is easy for natural family groupings and personal tribal relationships to become distorted, crushed or fragmented. In a village all the neighbours are personal friends or, at worst, personal enemies; none are strangers. In a large city many people do not even know the names of their neighbours.

  This de-personalizing does help to support the rebels and innovators who, in a smaller, tribal community, would be subjected to much greater cohesive forces. They would be flattened by the demands of conformity. But at the same time the paradox of the social isolation of the teeming city can cause a great deal of stress and misery for many of the human zoo inmates.

  Apart from the personal isolation there is also the direct pressure of physical crowding. Each kind of animal has evolved to exist in a certain amount of living space. In both the animal zoo and the human zoo this space is severely curtailed and the consequences can be serious. We think of claustrophobia as an abnormal response. In its extreme form it is, but in a milder, less clearly recognized form it is a condition from which all city-dwellers suffer. Half-hearted attempts are made to correct this. Special sections of the city are set aside as a token gesture towards providing open spaces—small bits of ‘natural environment’ called parks. Originally parks were hunting-grounds containing deer and other prey species, where rich super-tribesmen could re-live their ancestral patterns of hunting behaviour; but in modern city parks only the plant life remains.

  In terms of quantity of space, the city park is a joke. It would have to cover thousands of square miles to provide a truly natural amount of wandering space for the huge city population it serves. The best that can be said for it is that it is decidedly better than nothing.

  The alternative for the urban space-seekers is to make brief sorties into the countryside, and this they do with great vigour. Bumper to bumper the cars set off each week-end, and bumper to bumper they return. But no matter, they have wandered—they have patrolled a broader home range — and in so doing have kept up the fight against the unnatural spatial cramping of the city. If the crowded roads of the modern super-
tribe have turned this into something of a ritual, it is still preferable to giving up. The position is even worse for the inmates of the animal zoo. Their version of bumper-to-bumper patrolling is the even more stultified pacing to and fro across their cage floor. But they do not give up either. We should be thankful that we can do more than pace back and forth across our living-room floors.

  Having now traced the course of events that has led us to our present social condition, we can start to examine in more detail the various ways in which our behaviour patterns have succeeded in adjusting to life in the human zoo, or, in some instances, how they have disastrously failed to do so.

  CHAPTER TWO: Status and Super-status

  In any organized group of mammals, no matter how cooperative, there is always a struggle for social dominance. As he pursues this struggle, each adult individual acquires a particular social rank, giving him his position, or status, in the group hierarchy. The situation never remains stable for very long, largely because all the status strugglers are growing older. When the overlords, or ‘top dogs’, become senile, their seniority is challenged and they are overthrown by their immediate subordinates. There is then renewed dominance squabbling as everyone moves a little farther up the social ladder. At the other end of the scale, the younger members of the group are maturing rapidly, keeping up the pressure from below. In addition, certain members of the group may suddenly be struck down by disease or accidental death, leaving gaps in the hierarchy that have to be quickly filled.

  The general result is a constant condition o( status tension. Under natural conditions this tension remains tolerable because of the limited size of the social groupings. If,, however, in the artificial environment of captivity, the group size becomes too big, or the space available too small, then the status ‘rat race’ soon gets out of hand, dominance battles rage uncontrollably, and the leaders of the packs, prides, colonies or tribes come under severe strain. When this happens, the weakest members of the group are frequently hounded to their deaths, as the restrained rituals of display and counter-display degenerate into bloody violence.

  There are further repercussions. So much time has to be spent sorting out the unnaturally complex status relationships that other aspects of social life, such as parental care, become seriously and damagingly neglected.

  If the settling of dominance disputes creates difficulties for the moderately crowded inmates of the animal zoo, then it is obviously going to provide an even greater dilemma for the vastly overgrown super-tribes of the human zoo. The essential feature of the status struggle in nature is that it is based on the personal relationships of the individuals inside the social group. For the primitive human tribesman the problem was therefore a comparatively simple one, but when the tribes grew into super-tribes and relationships became increasingly impersonal, the problem of status rapidly expanded into the nightmare of super-status.

  Before we probe this tender area of urban life, it will be helpful to take a brief look at the basic laws which govern the dominance struggle. The best way to do this is to survey the battlefield from the viewpoint of the dominant animal.

  If you are to rule your group and to be successful in holding your position of power, there are ten golden rules you must obey. They apply to all leaders, from baboons to modern presidents and prime ministers. The ten commandments of dominance are these:

  1. You must clearly display the trappings, postures and gestures of dominance.

  For the baboon this means a sleek, beautifully groomed, luxuriant coat of hair; a calm, relaxed posture when not engaged in disputes; a deliberate and purposeful gait when active. There must be no outward signs of anxiety, indecision or hesitancy.

  With a few superficial modifications, the same holds true for the human leader. The luxuriant coat of fur becomes the rich and elaborate costume of the ruler, dramatically excelling those of his subordinates. He assumes postures unique to his dominant role. When he is relaxing, he may recline or sit, while others must stand until given permission to follow suit. This is also typical of the dominant baboon, who may sprawl out lazily while his anxious subordinates hold themselves in more alert postures near by. The situation changes once the leader stirs into aggressive action and begins to assert himself. Then, be he baboon or prince, he must rise into a more impressive position than that of his followers. He must literally rise above them, matching his psychological status with his physical posture. For the baboon boss this is easy: a dominant monkey is nearly always much larger than his underlings. He has only to hold himself erect and his greater body size does the rest. The situation is enhanced by cringing and crouching on the part of his more fearful subordinates. For the human leader, artificial aids may be necessary. He can magnify his size by wearing large cloaks or tall headgear. His height can be increased by mounting a throne, a platform, an animal, or a vehicle of some kind, or by being carried aloft by his followers. The crouching of the weaker baboons becomes stylized in various ways: subordinate humans lower their height by bowing, curtsying, kneeling, kowtowing, salaaming or prostrating.

  The ingenuity of our species permits the human leader to have it both ways. By sitting on a throne on a raised platform, he can enjoy both the relaxed position of the passive dominant and the heightened position of the active dominant at one and the same time, thus providing himself with a doubly powerful display posture.

  The dignified displays of leadership that the human animal shares with the baboon are still with us in many forms today. They can be seen in their most primitive and obvious conditions in generals, judges, high priests and surviving royalty. They tend to be more limited to special occasions than they once were, but when they do occur they are as ostentatious as ever. Not even the most learned academics are immune to the demands of pomp and finery on their more ceremonial occasions.

  Where emperors have given way to elected presidents and prime ministers, personal dominance displays have, however, become less overt. There has been a shift of emphasis in the role of leadership. The new-style leader is a servant of the people who happens to be dominant, rather than a dominator of the people who also serves them. He underlines his acceptance of this situation by wearing a comparatively drab costume, but this is only a trick. It is a minor dishonesty that he can afford, to make him seem more ‘one of the crowd’, but he dare not carry it too far or, before he knows it, he really will have become one of the crowd again. So, in other, less blatantly personal ways, he must continue to perform the outward display of his dominance. With all the complexities of the modern urban environment at his disposal, this is not difficult. The loss of grandeur in his dress can be compensated for by the elaborate and exclusive nature of the rooms in which he rules and the buildings in which he lives and works. He can retain ostentation in the way he travels, with motorcades, out-riders and personal planes. He can continue to surround himself with a large group of ‘professional subordinates’—aides, secretaries, servants, personal assistants, bodyguards, attendants, and the rest— part of whose job is merely to be seen to be servile towards him, thereby adding to his image of social superiority. His postures, movements and gestures of dominance can be retained unmodified. Because the power signals they transmit are so basic to the human species, they are accepted unconsciously and can therefore escape restriction. His movements and gestures are calm and relaxed, or firm and deliberate. (When did you last see a president or a prime minister running, except when taking voluntary exercise?) In conversation he uses his eyes like weapons, delivering a fixed stare at moments when subordinates would be politely averting their gaze, and turning his head away at moments when subordinates would be watching intently. He does not scrabble, twitch, fidget or falter. These are essentially the reactions of subordinates. If the leader performs them there is something seriously wrong with him in his role as the dominant member of the group.

  2. In moments of active rivalry you must threaten your subordinates aggressively.

  At the slightest sign of any challenge from a sub
ordinate baboon, the group leader immediately responds with an impressive display of threatening behaviour. There is a whole range of threat displays available, varying from those motivated by a lot of aggression tinged with a little fear to those motivated by a lot of fear and only a little aggression. The latter—the ‘scared threats’ of weak-but-hostile individuals— are never shown by a dominant animal unless his leadership is tottering. When his position is secure he shows only the most aggressive threat displays. He can be so secure that all he needs to do is to indicate that he is about to threaten, without actually bothering to carry it through. A mere jerk of his massive head in the direction of the unruly subordinate may be sufficient to subdue the inferior individual. These actions are called ‘intention movements’, and they operate in precisely the same way in the human species. A powerful human leader, irritated by the actions of a subordinate, need only jerk his head in the latter’s direction and fix him with a hard stare, to assert his dominance successfully. If he has to raise his voice or repeat an order, his dominance is slightly less secure, and he will, on eventually regaining control, have to re-establish his status by administering a rebuke or a symbolic punishment of some kind.