There are 193 species of monkeys and apes in existence.Among them, 192 species are covered with hairs.The only exception is a naked ape called Homo sapiens.A species so incomparable and so accomplished that it spends as much time examining its noble motives as it deliberately ignores its own basic motives, or spends as much time disguising it.He is proud that his brain size ranks first among all primates.But the size of his genitals also makes him the number one primate.For this fact, he tried his best to conceal it, preferring to give this honor to the mighty gorilla.His rhetoric, his probing, his crowding, the basics of his ape-like behavior deserve a careful examination now.

I'm a zoologist, and the naked ape is another animal.So it naturally became the object of my description.His patterns of behavior were complex and memorable, but I no longer wanted to avoid them.My reason for studying him is this: man, though learned, is still a hairless ape; and though he has acquired noble motives, he has not lost his more rustic and ancient ones.This often made him shy and embarrassed, but his ancient impulses had been with him for millions of years, and his newly acquired impulses were only thousands of years old at best.Moreover, if he wanted to break free from the biological inheritance accumulated throughout evolutionary history, there was no hope of doing so quickly.As long as he faces this fact, his worries will be greatly reduced and his desires will be more satisfied.At this point, zoologists may be able to help him.

A curious feature of past studies of this naked ape's behavior is that they almost always avoid its obvious features.Early anthropologists scrambled to go to the most difficult places in an attempt to reveal the characteristics of human beings.They scattered to the ends of the earth in stagnant, stagnant cultures.These cultures are not typical human cultures, they have failed in the process of evolution and are therefore on the verge of extinction.After such investigations, what these anthropologists brought back were strange marriage customs, peculiar kinship titles, and weird primitive religious rituals.They regard the material obtained from the investigation of primitive tribes as an important core material, as if these strange things are the most important for understanding the behavior of all human beings.Of course, their investigation is extremely interesting and valuable; it tells us what happens when a group of naked apes strays into a cultural dead end.It shows how far human behavior can be deviated from the norm without causing society to collapse completely.What it doesn't reveal, however, is exactly what is typical of the typical naked ape.The naked ape can be unraveled only by surveying all ordinary but productive members of large cultures, by examining their common patterns of behaviour; Uncover the typical features of a typical naked ape.In a biological sense, this is the only sound method of research.In contrast, old-fashioned anthropologists would argue that the primitive tribes they studied were closer to the heart of the problem than members of advanced civilizations.I don't think this is the case.The tribes of primitive technology living in the present world are not really primitive tribes, but tribes of retarded intellectual development.True primitive tribes have not survived thousands of years to the present.The naked ape is by nature an exploratory species; any society that stagnates is necessarily, to some degree, a failed society that 'got it wrong'.The blunder halted its progress, thwarted the species' inquisitive nature, and thwarted its efforts to understand the world around it.It is likely that the very traits that early anthropologists studied in these developmentally-arrested tribes were the ones that interfered with their progress.It is therefore dangerous to use information from the surveys of early anthropologists as a basis for constructing general patterns of our human behavior.

In sharp contrast to this, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are closer to the heart of the matter.They focused on clinical studies of primary human specimens, but unfortunately, many of their early studies, although not influenced by the information provided by early anthropologists, were still tinged with bias.True, their theories are based on clinical studies of social members in mainstream human culture, but the individuals they study are inevitably abnormal and mutilated specimens in some way.If these people were sane, accomplished, and therefore typical individuals, they would not seek medical attention from a psychiatrist, and would not be able to contribute to the psychiatrist's information bank.Here again I have to state that it is not my intention to belittle the value of psychotherapy and psychoanalytic research.Their insight into how patterns of human behavior break down is profound, and their research has opened our eyes.I simply feel that it would be unwise to pay too much attention to the early results of anthropological and psychiatric research in discussing the basic biological characteristics of all human beings.

(I should add that the current state of anthropology and psychiatry is changing rapidly. Many modern scholars in both disciplines have begun to recognize the limitations of their earlier research, and they have increasingly turned to the study of typical, healthy individuals. As one researcher recently said: "We've done the research in the past with the cart before the horse. We've tried to study the anomaly, and we're starting now—belatedly, it seems—to focus on the normal.") The research methodology used in this book draws on three main sources of material: 1. Information about the human past, information unearthed by paleontologists, and information learned from fossils and other remains of human ancestors;

2. Comparing the information provided by individual ecologists in the study of animal behavior; that is, information obtained on the basis of detailed observations of many different animals, especially monkeys and apes, who are our closest relatives. 3. Information about the naked ape itself; extract mainstream specimens of career success from major contemporary cultures, with the help of concise and direct observations.Learn about its most basic and widely shared behavioral patterns, so much information can be gleaned about the naked ape. The scale of this task necessitates a slight oversimplification.My approach has been to largely ignore the details of human technology and language, concentrating only on those aspects of human life that have an apparently comparable basis with other species, such as foraging, grooming, sleeping, fighting, mate selection, and child rearing.Faced with these basic questions, what is the reaction of the naked ape?How does his response compare to that of monkeys and apes?In what ways is he unique?How does his oddity relate to his evolution?

As I worked on these issues, I realized that I was taking the risk of blaming others.Some people are unwilling to seriously consider their own animal attributes.Maybe they think that my discussion of these issues with naked animal language will damage our image of human beings.To this, I can only assure them that I have no intention of belittling humanity.Others resent zoologists for intruding on their professional turf.I am convinced, however, that this method of research is extremely valuable; it may have its faults in one way or another, but it will reveal new (and in some places even unexpected) insights into the complex nature of our incomparable species. of) revelations that are refreshing.