University of Birmingham
University of Oxford
Dauntsey's School
University of Birmingham
University of Oxford
ethologist painter Zoologist author
Desmond Morris was born on January 24, 1928 in Purton, Lancashire, United Kingdom, into the family of Captain Hairy Howe and Marjorie (nee Hunt) Morris. When Morris was 14, his father was killed whilst serving in the armed forces, causing Morris to drift towards surrealism. His grandfather William Morris, an enthusiastic Victorian naturalist and founder of the Swindon local newspaper, greatly influenced him during his time living in Swindon.
Desmond John Morris was educated at Dauntsey's School, a boarding school in Wiltshire. After being demobilised in 1948, he studied zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1951 he began a doctorate at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford in animal behaviour. In 1954, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy for his work on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback.
In 1946, Desmond John Morris joined the British Army for two years of national service, becoming a lecturer in fine arts at the Chiseldon Army College. After being demobilised in 1948, he held his first one-man show of his own paintings at the Swindon Arts Centre. In 1950 he held a surrealist art exhibition with Joan Miró at the London Gallery. He also held many other exhibitions in later years. Also in 1950, Desmond Morris wrote and directed two surrealist films, "Time Flower" and "The Butterfly and the Pin."
Morris stayed at Oxford, researching the reproductive behaviour of birds. In 1956 he moved to London as Head of the Granada TV and Film Unit for the Zoological Society of London, and studied the picture-making abilities of apes. The work included creating programmes for film and television on animal behaviour and other zoology topics. He hosted Granada TV's weekly Zoo Time programme until 1959, scripting and hosting 500 programmes, and 100 episodes of the show Life in the Animal World for BBC2.
In 1957 he organised an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, showing paintings and drawings composed by chimpanzees. In 1958 he co-organised an exhibition, The Lost Image, which compared pictures by infants, human adults, and apes, at the Royal Festival Hall in London. In 1959 he left Zoo Time to become the Zoological Society's Curator of Mammals. In 1964 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Animal Behaviour. In 1967 he spent a year as executive director of the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Morris's books include "The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal", published in 1967. The book sold well enough for Morris to move to Malta in 1968 to write a sequel and other books. In 1973 he returned to Oxford to work for the ethologist Niko Tinbergen. From 1973 to 1981, Morris was a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1979 he undertook a television series for Thames TV, The Human Race, followed in 1982 by Man Watching in Japan, The Animals Road Show in 1986 and then several other series. National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview with Desmond Morris in 2015 for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library. Morris lives in the same house in North Oxford as the 19th-century lexicographer James Murray who worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. He exhibits at the Taurus Gallery in North Parade, Oxford, close to his home.
Tripod Figure
The Egg Thieves
The Observers
The Titillator
Lovers' White Dreamtime
The Protege
The Obsessional
For Insiders Only
The Guardian of the Cycle
The Day After Yesterday
A Girl Selling Flowers
The Last Serenade
The Nest I
The New Arrival
Revolt of the Pets
The Seven Sisters
Disturbance in the Colony
The Observers
The Protector
Good Morning Miss Smith
The Survivors
The Red Guard
The Three Members
The Intruder
Celebration
The Attentive Friend
Mother Goddess
The Exquisite Corpse
Entry to a Landscape
The Sentinel
The Agitator
The Killing Game
The Arena
The Presentation
The Lovers
Table for Two
The Old Dilemma
Over the Wall
Desmond Morris is keen on the concept of playfulness. Morris's theories do not endear him to feminists. The phrase he uses most often to describe men is "risk-takers." He says that for a million years or more men had to go out and face down woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, develop strategies to overcome them (cooperation to fight common foes, he emphasises, is genetically more important to man than the competitive urge), and "bring home the bacon - literally", while women cleaned the cave, raised the serial litter that is unique to the human species, and organised every other aspect of life. His view, anathema to many fellow scientists as well as to feminists, is that this genetic separation can't be wished away by equality legislation.
Quotations:
"If women ran the political world rather than men, for instance. I don't think men are suited to politics. Women are much more suited because they are genetically more cautious and are not going to make stupid mistakes."
"Women have more accidents but men have bigger accidents," he says. "If you're going to have a big car crash, it's always a man; if you're going to get a dented fender, it's a woman. You hardly ever hear of a high-speed crash involving a woman; it's always a man."
In 1978, Morris was elected Vice-Chairman of Oxford United Football Club.
In July 1952, Morris married Ramona Baulch; they had one son, Jason.
