"The Human Zoo"

-by desmond morris
1969
The second paragraph of the introduction may make your 2019 self cringe. Anti-masturbation, anti-homosexual, anti-fetish, anti-fat...
Don't panic. Get past it.
Once you do, you'll dance with one of the sharper minds you'll ever encounter.
He's also anti-murder and anti-self-mutilation, and he calls these things (along with the aforementioned) behaviors that animals display only under conditions of captivity. And therein lies his thesis - that so much of modern humyn behavior has arisen only because post-tribal humynity has voluntarily put itself into conditions exactly like those which other animals experience in cages.
Decades ago, i somehow missed this book after i was gobsmacked by the brilliance of "The Naked Ape". I've read other morris books, never being aware that this was the sequel and companion piece. In some ways, this one's even more brilliant or important for anyone trying to understand how humyns have become so unbalanced, violent, and self-destructive. In a nutshell, says desmond, we've replaced all the comforts and securities of tribal life with conditions of under-stimulation or over-stimulation (or both) which leave us on the brink of insanity.
Desmond is a zoologist, and his strength lies in observing other animals to better understand ourselves. Even if he has blind spots (which he almost assuredly does...other animals DO display homosexuality in non-captivity, and our prehistoric life was probably more idyllic than he imagines), his big-picture analysis is possibly as spot-on than any thinker ever.
But to call homosexuality a...maladaption?? Lumping it with other fetishes (dom/sub, pedophilia, rubber pants)? I'm going to focus on this one, not because it's central to the book's point, but because it may be the most offputting pill for any reader to swallow. Can you accept that under natural conditions for any species, sexual maturity and sexual exploration go hand in hand? That it's unnatural to avoid sexual contact for YEARS after maturity has arrived? But that's exactly what we do to our children. For me, there was a half-decade gap between puberty and my first sex.
Would anyone deny that the quality of one's first sexual experiences has an influence on subsequent behaviors and preferences? What would happen if, instead of an affirmative first experience, a species generally experienced either something negative (molestation/rape) or a whole lot of NOTHING? Doesn't it make sense that they might develop a staggering variety sexual hangups or maladaptions? The latter arising because, absent any socially-approved expression of sexuality that is in line with sex's primary natural purpose (procreation), we might bond or identify with ANYTHING that touches our intimate, repressed urges? Smother something, and it will seek oxygen anywhere it can.
We're all aware of pandas in captivity who grow up isolated, and then years later when the zoo wants baby pandas, these pandas are put with members of the opposite sex, and...nothing happens!! Zip. Zilch. Barry white music doesn't help.
But isn't that exactly what we do to ourselves? And so we bond with whatever's at hand. Rubber pants...or members of our own sex, with whom society allows opportunity for at least some physical intimacy. With what we now know about homosexuality in nature, i'm sure even desmond would be less dismissive of it in it's entirety. But does his overall point have merit? Perhaps even a whole lot? Anyway, i took this detour into homosexuality because it might be the most off-putting part of the book to modern eyes. But if you can make peace with that, the merits of morris's thesis might make this one of the most important works you'll ever read, in terms of understanding how our species has gone so horribly awry.