I feel a real fascination for primates, our closest relatives in the rest of the animal kingdom. Despite our rationality, which I do not believe, in fact, heritage of the Sapiens Sapiens, we have much in common with them and I usually look for in their behaviors the explanation of our actions and reactions. We are, first of all, naked monkeys, and our purely instinctive babies deserve to be treated as naked monkeys as zoologist Desmond Morris explains.
Zoology of the Human
Human cultural diversity and our infinite differences always have a common link, our mammalian and primate nature, and, in almost all cases, building civilization contrary to who we are in these aspects, is not usually good for babies, children and adults. Getting to know each other is necessary to be happy and knowing each other means understand the human being with the perspective of a zoologist.
Desmond Morris
One of my leading anthropologists is, without hesitation, the controversial Desmond Morris. This is an English anthropologist and ethologist born in 1928 author of such famous works as "The naked monkey", "The human zoo", "Intimate behavior", "The human animal: A personal view of human beings" and "The naked woman: A study of the female body. "
The work of Desmond Morris It's very original. Analyze the human being and his behavior as if investigating, as a zoologist, any other species, and reaches enormously interesting conclusions in many aspects and also in regard to breeding, childbirth or lactation. It uses, of course, archaeological, historical and psychological data, but it all serves to explain the animal nature of many of our behaviors, although I will focus on what refers to the breeding.
As a zoologist, he covers sexual, social, nurturing and feeding aspects reaching controversial conclusions in his time, some doubts or refuted, but in general, enormously significant.
The breasts of human females
For example, his explanation sexual appearance of the hemispherical aspect of the female breastsI found it fascinating at the time, when I was a student. The monkeys have sexual intercourse by accessing the female from behind, so that, when going to bipedism, this image is missing and the human male is largely successful visually.
The female breast It becomes a hemispherical claim that reflects the primate drive and therefore takes the sexual connotation in the human: it is, forgive me for the expression, an ass in the middle of the chest.
That explains that, in reality, breast size does not matter at the food level. Small breasts can produce milk just like large breasts, although they are less sexually attractive to some of the males of the species. Other mammals feed their young with small breasts, which do not protrude and the breast of the human female can have that function, which is the primary, whether large or small.
Breastfeeding in the naked monkey
Breastfeeding the naked monkey is a breastfeeding on demand. There are animals, such as wolves, that secrete very concentrated milk, designed for breastfeeding with a long time between hour and hour, with the young in the burrow.
However, the milk of the human female changes its composition in the tetada and adapts to the needs of its young according to the moment and the age of this, being, by the very special nature of the human baby, that it cannot be alone in the den or even hold the mother's fur, it is necessary to have it in her arms and give it free access to breastfeeding continuously.
Parenting
The enormous implication of the naked monkey in the raising of children is destable. Human babies require a natural breastfeeding of at least two years, which means that the female breastfeeding on demand has a natural spacing of about three years between the children, which is also necessary since the human child needs to be carried in arms and cannot cling to fur like in other species.
He Human baby's dream is naturally accompanied, both for instinctive security and for drives that make you rest better with your mother's breast and the sound of your heart. In that we do not differentiate ourselves from our relatives who sleep with their young until they are independent to take care of themselves.
The same acquisition of language and the search of parents in moments of danger have an explanation, also, zoological. Human children look for their parents when there is danger and not having them close starts their mechanisms of fear.
The monkey teacher
The naked monkey is also a teacher monkey and the young need the example of their parents and other adults in the family group, to learn to behave by imitation.
Human children have a very long childhood and have to learn many things. Their instinct is curiosity and they learn by imitation and essay. The error is necessary to learn as much as the supervision of the reference adult.
It is also striking that violent responses increase as the number of children per adult caregiver increases.
My gurus
Recently I confessed that I do not believe in parenting gurus, and it is true, but, if I had to decide on two authors who have been and are fundamental in my worldview both in regard to children and, in general, in the explanation of the Human and his History, I would decide, without hesitation, for Desmond Morris and by Casilda Rodrigáñez.
I do not believe everything they say, but they have made me learn and question everything to find my own reasons and certainties, if certainty, in the human, is possible.
I would add to this list of gurus a philosopher of bad reputation, for the appropriation and misunderstanding of his works by Nazism, but it transcends the theme of this blog and would require too much textual analysis to frame his defense of the impulses of man in this blog. I leave it, therefore, in fallow.
Summing up and returning to Desmond Morris, we are naked monkeys, and many of our needs and especially those of our offspring, should be understood with the perspective of a zoologist who exposes and explains that, first of all, we are only naked monkeys and our babies, naked monkeys.
