Free The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

or an informal liaison of some sort. The high frequency of nonmarital copulation that is known to take place should not be taken to imply a random promiscuity. In most cases it involves typical courtship and pair-formation behaviour, even if the resulting pair-bond is not particularly long lasting. Approximately go per cent of the population becomes formally paired, but 5o per cent of females and 84 per cent of males will have experienced copulation before marriage. By the age of forty, 26 per cent of married females and 50 per cent of married males will have experienced extra-marital copulation. Official pair-bonds also break down completely in a number of cases and are abandoned. The pairbonding mechanism in our species, although very powerful, is far from perfect.
    Now that we have all these facts before us we can start to ask questions. How does the way we behave sexually help us to survive? Why do we behave in the way we do, rather than in some other way? We may be helped in these questions if we ask another one: How does our sexual behaviour compare with that of other living primates?
    Straight away we can see that there is much more intense sexual activity in our own species than in any other primates, including our closest relations. For them, the lengthy courtship phase is missing. Hardly any of the monkeys and apes develop a prolonged pair-bond relationship. The pre-copulatory patterns are brief and usually consist of no more than a few facial expressions and simple vocalisations. Copulation itself is also very brief. (In baboons, for instance, the time taken from mounting to ejaculation is no more than seven to eight seconds, with a total of no more than fifteen pelvic thrusts, often fewer). The female does not appear to experience any kind of climax. If there is anything that could be called an orgasm it is a trivial response when compared with that of the female of our own species.
    The period of sexual receptivity of the female monkey or ape is more restricted. It usually only lasts for about a week, or a little more, of their monthly cycle. Even this is an advance on the lower mammals, where it is limited more severely to the actual time of ovulation, but in our own species the primate trend towards longer receptivity has been pushed to the very limit, so that the female is receptive at virtually all times. Once a female monkey or ape becomes pregnant, or is nursing a baby, she ceases to be sexually active. Again, our species has spread its sexual activities into these periods, so that there is only a brief time just before and just after parturition when mating is seriously limited.
    Clearly, the naked ape is the sexiest primate alive. To find the reason for this we have to look back again at his origins. What happened? First, he had to hunt if he was to survive. Second, he had to have a better brain to make up for his poor hunting body. Third, he had to have a longer childhood to grow the bigger brain and to educate it. Fourth, the females had to stay put and mind the babies while the males went for hunting. Fifth, the males had to co-operate with one another on the hunt. Sixth, they had to stand straight and use weapons for the hunt to succeed. am not implying that these changes happened in that order; on the contrary they undoubtedly all developed gradually at the same time, each modification helping the others along. I am simply enumerating the six basic, major changes that took place as the hunting ape evolved. Inherent in these changes there are, I believe, all the ingredients necessary to make up our present sexual complexity.
    To begin with, the males had to be sure that their females were going to be faithful to them when they left them alone to go hunting. So the females had to develop a pairing tendency. Also, if the weaker males were going to be expected to co-operate on the hunt, they had to be given more sexual rights. The females would have to be more shared out, the sexual organisation more