德斯蒙德·莫利斯

德斯蒙德·约翰·莫利斯（Desmond John Morris，1928年1月24日—2026年4月19日）英国著名动物学家。

生平

出生于英国威尔特郡，中学毕业后，就读英国伯明翰大学，得学士学位。后又入牛津大学继续研究动物行为，提出一篇有关鱼类性行为的论文，获动物学博士。1952年与Ramona结婚。1956-1959年，受伦敦动物学会之聘，担任制作影片及电视节目工作。1959-1967年，主持伦敦动物学会哺乳类动物组。现任牛津大学威伏生学院(Wolfson College, Oxford)研究员，主持一项动物行为的研究计划(Program)，同时，也继续在写探讨动物及人类行为的专书。

他对动物行为的探讨，花了许多时间观察与研究。此外，他对人类学，考古学与绘画都很有兴趣。早先他就写了许多有关动物行为的学术性论文，发表于各种科学杂志上。

著作

1962年《生物学的艺术》

1965年《哺乳类动物导论》

1967年《裸猿》

1969年《人类动物园》

1970年《繁殖行为的种种类型》

1971年《亲密行为》

1977年《人类观》

1985年《肢体观》

1994年《人这种动物》

另外，又与妻子合写《人与蛇》、《人与猿》、《人与熊猫》等。

Desmond John Morris (24 January 1928 – 19 April 2026) was an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He was known for his 1967 book The Naked Ape, and for his television programmes such as Zoo Time.

Early life and education

Desmond John Morris was born on 24 January 1928 in Purton, Wiltshire, to Marjorie (née Hunt) and children's fiction author Harry Morris. In 1933, the Morrises moved to Swindon where Desmond developed an interest in natural history and writing. He was educated at Dauntsey's School, a boarding school in Wiltshire.

In 1946, Morris joined the British Army for two years of national service, becoming a lecturer in fine arts at the Chiseldon Army College in Wiltshire. After being demobilised in 1948, he held his first one-man show of his own paintings at the Swindon Arts Centre, and studied zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1950 he held a surrealist art exhibition with Joan Miró at the London Gallery. He held many other exhibitions in later years. Also in 1950, Morris wrote and directed two surrealist films, Time Flower and The Butterfly and the Pin. 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 degree for his work on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback.

Career

Morris stayed at Oxford, researching the reproductive behaviour of birds. In 1956 he moved to London as Head of the Granada Television 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, before returning shortly after in the 1960s, 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 common 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. He returned to the programme in the 1960s. 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 Nikolaas Tinbergen. From 1973 to 1981, Morris was a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1979 he undertook a television series for Thames Television, The Human Race, followed in 1982 by Man Watching in Japan, The Animals Road Show in 1986 and then several other series. Morris wrote and presented the BBC documentary The Human Animal and its accompanying book in 1994. National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/16) with Morris, in 2015, for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.

In 2022, in association with the Natural History Museum of Porto he published Watching which he described as not exactly an autobiography but 'a book about the joys of watching the world'.

Morris was a Fellow honoris causa of the Linnean Society of London.