The human zoo

The scenes look familiar. A dirtyish, oldish man strutting about town accompanied by no less than four or five women taking his place in the best seats in the hottest club in town… And eight out of 10 people seeing this thinking of him as Mr. Big Time rather than the two thinking of him as Mr. Big Bad Wolf. Another scene: Missy Teasy playing hard to get, feeling coveted, giving her suitor the run-around in a party then flirting with the best looking guy in the room, of course, to make herself appear more coveted in the eyes of her suitor and of everyone else in the room. What about this one? Mr. Contender – a hotshot officer of an otherwise stable political party – announcing his supremacy over the other hotshot officer of the same political party and declaring that his breakaway group is the legitimate carrier of the party name. In the nightly news, we see violence from within the home to wars between nations. The continuous battle for supremacy and wealth.

Oh, yes. There will always be those times when one of us juts out from the crowd and tries to break loose from the bondage of being just one of everyone else. And there are varying degrees of this desire and complementing action as if yearning for emancipation from one social level to the next higher one. From the basic family unit where the one who makes the most money and therefore the most economic contribution holds moral ascendancy over everyone else – to world dominance by a self-proclaimed superpower such as the United States over the rest of the planet. The prominence of the recurrent, common, consistent and therefore totally predictable behavior varies depending on how large the social group is.

To anyone who believes himself to be more special or superior to everybody else, I’ve got really bad news. As much as we might be surrounded with the trappings of beauty, wealth, fame, strength or power according to one Desmond Morris, author of the book The Human Zoo, mankind, our kind, hasn’t really come THAT far. While we might often describe our crowded urban life environment as a "concrete jungle," Morris says it is a grossly inaccurate comparison. He asks why it is that, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair bonds or commit murder. Why do humans? The author of the book answers:

"Other animals do behave in these ways under certain circumstances. Namely, when they are confined in unnatural conditions of captivity. The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle. It is a human zoo."

The comparison we must make then, he says, is not between the city-dweller and the wild animal but between the city-dweller and the captive animal. And we are certainly captives of our own doing trying to cope with the evolution of our surroundings while not biologically being able to catch up. Now, THIS made me really laugh. Here are most of us pretending to be the most refined and educated of all when all it takes is one stimulus to unleash the inner beast – or in most behavioral study cases, the inner baboon.

We don’t have to go very far in the specie evolution family tree. Compare the case of Mr.Big Time. Baboons do not have socio-economic status. But they sure have social status, namely, dominance ranks. The male baboon in a group less physically endowed in height, agility or aggressiveness automatically becomes the dominant male. The dominant male baboon, time and again, is challenged and, to keep everyone else at bay, he regularly struts about with the females, specifically, the female who is "in heat" as evidenced by "bigger swellings" than the other female baboons approaching ovulation. Are you grinning yet? What about Missy Teasy? According to author Robert Sapolsky, in his book MunkyLuv, a revolution has taken place in the study of primates. It was thought that if a female baboon was in heat, the dominant male would be the one to claim her. It seems women’s liberation has also been adapted somewhere along the primate way. The "female choice process" goes this way: When a female is pursued by a male, she’d repeatedly walk past the male’s worst rival forcing the two into tense interactions. You’d think she’d go for the victor in an eventual duel. Nope. While the two rivals go for it, the female pursues the "nice" third baboon hidden beyond the bushes. Even scientists found the behavior astonishing. Fascinating as it is humbling is the discovery that group behavior of baboons is as well comparable to those who jut out from the ranks of human society to try to emerge as better than the rest or the best among all. Mr. Contender sounds pretty much like someone who’s read Morris’ 10 Rules on Power: Primate Edition. At the slightest sign of any challenge from a subordinate baboon, the group leader immediately responds with an impressive display of threatening behavior. If the display fails, then a physical attack must follow. And if a challenge involves brain and not brawn, then the baboon boss must be cunning, quick and intelligent as well as strong and aggressive.

Still the ergos of science, as they usually are, stop as far as studies go. And studies seem to conclude that the "human animal" cannot help but trap himself in the course of trying to achieve what is "unnatural." And the natural way – since the time when the earliest forms of man emerged and walked on two feet – was to look after his immediate tribe and hunt for food while women gathered plants on a daily basis before winter. Not much more than that. Centuries later, the concept of "cooperation" within a hugely growing population required a greater output "beneficial to all" supposedly compromising the human’s natural tendency. In the process, the individual farther and farther strays with his "inventiveness, plans, projects and designs" that complicate the natural methods and purposes. Imagine. Suddenly, the innate hunter of centuries-old had to restrain himself and wait his turn.

The unbiased eyes of a hovering Martian would probably wonder why the human animal takes it so far as to explain his existence with philosophy and with great effort while often succumbing to bestial impulses. For it is apparent no other species of the lesser beings in the animal kingdom participate in genocide, commit massive racial violence and inflict terrorism. Sharks, as ferociously as they are portrayed, or even snakes generally do not harm humans unless provoked. Ants have a well-defined social structure with a cooperative and planning system farther efficient than human systems. Dogs have proven themselves much more loyal allies than even human relatives. A female lion never leaves her cubs until her offspring are grown and able. Bees are better architects with their perfect octagon beehive chambers, goats better weather forecasters.

If we haven’t gone very far from where we came and our self-inflicted incarceration required by an evolved lifestyle incongruent to what is natural continues from hereon – where is the deluded human animal going? Morris ends with a frightening scenario:

For us, the super tribesmen of the 20th century, it will be interesting to see what happens. For our children, however, it will be more than merely interesting. By the time they are in charge of the situation, the human species will no doubt be facing problems of such magnitude that it will be a matter of living or dying.