BBC presenter and 'Naked Ape' legend Desmond Morris dies aged 98

Lydia Davies
Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:27:52 +0000

Desmond Morris, the renowned zoologist, author, artist and television presenter, has died at the age of 98.

His son Jason confirmed the death on Monday, describing his father as "a great man and an even better father and grandfather" who lived "a lifetime of exploration, curiosity and creativity".

Mr Morris achieved international fame with his 1967 bestseller The Naked Ape, which went on to sell approximately 20 million copies worldwide.

The groundbreaking work presented human beings as fundamentally primate in nature, arguing our species shares lineage, behaviour, rituals and family structures with 192 other apes and monkeys.

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Beyond his scientific writing, Mr Morris was a surrealist painter who exhibited alongside artists including Joan Miró and became a household name as the presenter of ITV's Zoo Time.

The broadcaster was born on January 24, 1928, in Purton, a village near Swindon in Wiltshire.

His father, Captain Harry Howe Morris, had suffered severe injuries in the trenches during the First World War and died when the zoologist was just 14, leaving the boy with a deep-seated animosity towards the politicians and clergy who had supported the conflict.

As a solitary child, Mr Morris spent countless hours observing wildlife on his grandmother's pond from a makeshift raft constructed from oil drums and planks.

He studied zoology at Birmingham University, where he achieved a First, before completing his doctorate at Oxford under Niko Tinbergen, researching the reproductive behaviour of the 10-spined stickleback.

In 1959, aged just 31, he became London Zoo's youngest ever curator of mammals.

The Naked Ape advanced the provocative theory that a mere 10,000 years of civilisation could not override millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution.

Mr Morris's unflinching Darwinism drew fierce criticism from religious believers, who objected to his characterisation of humanity as "a risen ape" rather than "a fallen angel" and his dismissal of religion as "a confidence trick".

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Scientists too challenged his methodology, with some viewing his work as speculative rather than rigorous.

The writer Adam Rutherford described elements of Mr Morris's approach as "salacious guesswork and erotic fantasy", arguing finding something attractive did not necessarily explain its biological purpose.

Feminists also took issue with his portrayal of men as "risk-taking" hunter-gatherers who drove human evolution while women remained in the cave.

Mr Morris became a familiar face in British homes through ITV's Zoo Time, which aired weekly from 1956 until 1967, establishing him as a natural broadcaster capable of rivalling David Attenborough's BBC programmes.

His artistic talents had emerged during national service, when he taught fine arts to soldiers, and he went on to exhibit surrealist paintings populated by strange organic forms he termed "biomorphs".

In 1957, the former BBC presenter curated an exhibition of chimpanzee paintings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, presenting work by a chimp named Congo that won admiration from Miró, Dalí and Picasso.

Alhough widely mocked in the press at the time, Congo's paintings later fetched thousands at auction, while Mr Morris's own work eventually commanded substantial sums, with one piece reportedly selling privately for £850,000 in 2018.