[music]
>>[Narrator: Desmond Morris] Of over a million species of animals on our planet, one species has
come to dominate all other lifeforms, and to alter dramatically the face of the Earth.
It's a species that if we remove its protective layer of clothing, reveals a rather strange anatomy.
A species I once referred to as "the naked ape."
Physically the human being is a puny primate with a vulnerable, unprotected skin, with no natural weapon.
No armor, no sharp spines, no venom, no fangs or claws.
Yet equipped with little more than an enlarged brain,
this compulsively curious creature has come to dominate the natural world.
What is the secret of its lavish, unprecedented success?
[music]
Anatomically, the human animal is unusual, to say the least. Its lack of hair is unique among primates.
Contrasting with other apes, its face has a protruding nose, whites to the eyes, and lips that are turned inside out.
Its legs are long and straight. And unlike any other mammal, it walks bipedally.
The breasts of the female remain swollen throughout her adult life, even when they're not giving milk.
Again, a unique feature.
There are a few surviving patches of hair, including on the tops of the heads, in the armpits and around the genitals.
The male has the largest penis of any primate.
And the human animal is the only primate that possesses rounded, fleshy buttocks.
Altogether, these unique features make us a very strange ape indeed.
And for a student of animal behavior, even more peculiar than its anatomy are its activity in the wild.
I'm a zoologist and since man is an animal, I can see no reason why my work, and also in this series,
I shouldn't study this particular species in the same way that I've studied many other animals in the past.
The secret is patient observation.
For me, the ideal method is to go out into the field and study humans in their natural environment.
In the streets and parks, the shops and offices, the villages and cities,
to analyze their natural behavior as it happens in real life situations all over the world.
Everywhere I go, I'm struck by how similar all human beings are to one another in all important respects.
Of course, there are many superficial differences and these are often so impressive
that we pay too much attention to them and start treating one another as if we belong to different species,
with disastrous results. But, despite all our variations in costume, ritual and believe,
biologically we're all astonishingly close to one another. A fact which I find very reassuring.
Back in the late 1960's, I was sitting in this very restaurant, on the island of Malta,
talking to my publisher. I drew his attention to the fact that on the other side of the road
there were two men gesturing in a particular way.
The way they were holding their palms to one side was fascinating to me.
And he said, "You know, you look at people the way birdwatchers look at birds."
And I said, "Yeah, I suppose you could call me a 'man-watcher.'" As soon as I'd said it,
it was as if I'd fired a starting gun on a major, new project.
One that was to engross me for many years to come and take me to over 60 different countries.
It was wildly ambitious, but I decided to make a complete classification of all human actions,
gestures, postures, expressions all over the world. And this was going to take a very long time.
I was going to do for actions what dictionary makers had done for words.
I began making huge charts naming every facial expression, every gesture, every movement, every posture.
I kept at it for month after month. And 8 years later I had completed the work and was able at last
to introduce people to the fascinating subject of human body language.
One of the first problems I encountered was that even the simplest human action,
such as the handshake, has countless variations.
Sometimes it's reduced to a mere palm touch, as with these Maasai elders in East Africa.
But, in other countries it becomes more elaborate.
In Mali in West Africa the hand-shaker briefly touches his own forearm as the palms clasp.
In Morocco, the hand-shakers kiss one another's hands at the same time as clasping them.
And in Turkey, these Kurdish farmers have taken a simple action and converted it into what
amounts to a minor ritual. It's the local rule that they can't start bargaining until they are shaking hands.
And they have to keep on doing so until the deal is struck.
The essential feature of hand-shaking is that it's an egalitarian act.
Regardless of their social standing, the two people involved are momentarily performing identical actions.
This meeting as equals that has spread around the world is comparatively recent.
In earlier times when greeting, it was common for the less important individuals to literally
lower themselves as a sign of respect. In some remote parts of the world we can still see this even today.
The Toda people of South India still perform this body-lowering ritual
with high-status feet placed on low-status heads.
Despite their variations, all these greetings have one thing in common.
They're all fine-tuned to the precise context in which they occur.
So many gestures have different meanings in different places.
You have to be quite careful how you use your hands when you're in a marketplace in a foreign country.
Now to me, this means everything's fine or O.K. But, if I happen to be in the south of France
it would have a different meaning. There the ring shape made by the hand symbolizes a not or a zero.
So, in south of France this means zero or worthless.
So, you don't want to say the wine was "great" [gestures]
because in fact you'd be saying the wine was worthless.
It gets even worse if you go to Sardinia because there the same gesture is an obscenity
with the ring shape symbolizing an orifice. And if you think you're going to say
something is great in Sardinia like this, believe me you'll be in trouble.
There's another way you can make mistakes with gestures as you move from place to place.
Because a single message is given in a different way in different countries.
The crazy sign. How do you say to somebody "you're crazy?" Well, here in Rome you do this.
But, in England I would probably do this, the temple screw, saying he's got a screw lose.
Or I might say his brain is going round and round.
Or I might tap my head saying "what's he think he's got inside his skull."
In some countries you do it with two hands. It varies from place to place.
If you go to Japan you have to be careful because if you it this way it means he's intelligent.
You have to it in the counter-clockwise direction in Japan if you want to say that somebody is crazy.
So, all over the world, the same message is given in a slightly different way.
One of the most obvious examples of this and one of the most dangerous is the insult gesture.
This Turkish pedestrian displays his anger with the trust of a stiff forearm,
using his arm symbolically as an aggressively erect penis.
A slightly more obscure insult is the cornuto, or horn sign, frequently seen in Italy.
It implies that that victim of the insult is a cuckold, that his wife is unfaithful to him.
In North America, the most common insult is the middle fingered jerk,
employing the middle finger as a symbolic penis.
This is an ancient Roman gesture and is well-known in many countries.
Much more localized is the Greek moutza.
This dates back to Byzantine times and symbolizes excrement being pushed into the victim's face.
In Britain the main insult is a two-fingered gesture which dates back to the battle of Agincourt.
It's a gesture that foreigners sometimes confuse with the "V for victory" sign,
but that's performed with the hand the other way around.
Most regional body language has a long and complicated history, with the origins often forgotten.
One of the special qualities of regional gestures is that they are amazingly conservative.
They remain confined to their own particular area regardless of the fact that all around them
national boundaries keep changing. As a result of this, within a particular country today you
can find what we can call a "gesture frontier." A place where one gesture stops and another one begins.
This is a gesture frontier behind me. It's the Massacre Range in Central Italy.
And south of here in Naples people use, for example, the head toss when they're saying no.
Up in the north in Rome they shake their heads from side to side when they're saying no.
And we were amazed to find that here, the Massacre Range is a very narrow area, just a few miles,
where you get the switch from head tossing to head shaking.
The explanation of this switch is astonishing. In origin, the head toss is a Greek gesture and
many centuries ago the ancient Greeks colonized southern Italy and started to move north.
And it was here at the Massacre Range that they stopped their advance 2,500 years ago.
And to this day, in the north people still give the typical European head shake when saying no.
While in the south they still give they ancient Greek head toss.
And this difference has survived despite all the mobility of modern life
and the spread of films and television programs. The old gesture frontier remains.
Yes signals made with the head are just as complicated as no signals.
In most parts of the world people nod their head up and down when saying yes.
Many people mistakenly assume that this action is completely global, but this isn't the case.
There are two areas where something else happens.
One of them is India, where instead of being nodded, the head is wobbled side to side when saying yes.
To visitors this looks like a maybe, but it's not. It's a sign of definite agreement.
When your taxi driver agrees with you, you can see his head rolling from side to side.
You get the impression that he's undecided. But, every wobble he makes means yes.
In another region, it's not just the visitors who are confused.
Even the inhabitants are not always sure what's going on.
Here in Bulgaria they use both the head nod and the head wobble when saying yes.
This creates total confusion. Why on Earth they do this remains a mystery, even to them.
Although gestures often persist for hundreds or even thousands of years, sometimes they may change
their meaning as they're passed on from generation to generation.
We all think we know what the popular thumbs up and thumbs down gestures mean.
[children shouting boo or yay]
If we go to the cinema we are left in little doubt as to the significance of these gestures.
The thumbs up for good and the thumbs down for bad are very well known gestures.
And many people can tell you how they began. It was here in the Colosseum in Rome.
If a gladiator at the end of a fight was to be spared the crowd gave him a thumbs up sign.
If he was to be slain it was a thumbs down sign. That's the popular story, there's just one catch.
It's completely false. It never happened like that.
In ancient times if the gladiator was to be spared they gave him a covered up thumb,
the "pollice compresso." This means the compressed or squashed thumb.
If he was to be slain then they mimed the act of stabbing him with a sword like this.
Because they were high up they stabbed downwards like that.
That's the truth of the matter and the next time you go to the movies,
if you happen to see the thumbs up you'll just have to take it with a pinch of salt.
It's almost certain that our ancestors used gestures to communicate specific information
long before they had a spoken language. Even today with words as our main form of communication,
there are still situations where gestures have a definite advantage.
For example, they can communicate information over a far greater distance than would be
possible by shouting. At race tracks in England, the white-gloved tic-tac men signal changes in the
betting odds to the bookies so that they can keep up with the alterations the arrivals may be making.
The flashing movements of the white gloves can be seen even at night and at a great distance.
In some sports a gestural sign language not only conveys information over a great distance,
but also allows messages to be kept secret.
The coach of an American football team transmits complex signals to his quarterback
using coded hand signals that conceal his intentions from the opposing team.
Even if the opposing team does manage to crack the gestural code at any one time,
it's being constantly changed to confuse them.
On the floor of the Bombay stock exchange hand gestures provide a powerful tool
when competing for attention. The frantic sell and buy signals, indicated by the position of the hands,
can be the basis of huge deals.
An insistent flick of the fingers the only way to attract attention above the roar of the crowd.
In the eerie silence of the Australian Outback, these two Warlpiri women are conversing quite
adequately by gestures alone. Now they're not deaf and they're perfectly capable of speech,
but local custom demands that as an act of mourning they don't utter a word for months
after a tribesman has died. It's their version of wearing black.
Clearly gestures are important to us, but why are we so much better at signalling with our
hands than other animals? The answer of course is that we are the only mammals that are bipedal.
They are all quadrupedal, they walk along on all fours.
But, when we stood up on our hind legs millions of years ago, here in Africa,
we freed our hands from the business of walking. We freed them from the chore of locomotion
and that was what enabled them to become the flexible, gesticulating hands that we have today.
In order to appreciate what an immense impact the simple act of standing up had on our
primeval ancestors, it's only necessary to watch our nearest relatives the chimpanzees.
When they're moving about in their natural habitat their hands still have to function
much of the time as plodding front feet.
And this prevents them from becoming highly developed as expressive organs of gesture.
Their front feet can operate successfully as grasping hands, for example, when holding a baby.
But, they never develop the subtlety of movement that we see in our own species.
Elegant gesturing remains the prerogative of the uniquely bipedal, naked ape.
So far, all the gestures that I've described have been regional and they're used consciously
to replace speech like the deliberate directions of this policeman.
But, there's another type of gesture all together,
unconscious hand movements usually referred to as gesticulations.
Instead of replacing speech, they accompany it.
This type of hand signal has been christened the baton gesture
because it beats time to our words and emphasizes the points we are making.
But, baton gestures do more than merely beat time, they also indicate our changing moods.
The posture of the hand as it beats the air revealing the emotional state of the speaker.
Here at Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park a veritable gallery of human baton gestures is on display.
Let's watch for a moment.
Now let's take a closer look at two of his gestures. Slowing it down, his first gesture is
a repelling action using his hand as if it were pushing away the intruder,
but without making physical contact. This is obvious enough, but what's he do next?
As the intruder leaves he draws his chosen audience back towards him using an "air grasp" gesture.
There.
Another speaker is about to mention a precise date and unconsciously accompanies this with a
precision gesture, as if holding a small object with great delicacy between his thumb and forefinger.
A third speaker is in a more aggressive mood. He's using, not a precision grip, but a power grip.
Thrusting his clenched fist at the audience. The power of his fist reflecting the power of his argument.
But, now he switches to the raised forefinger, beating his listeners over the head with his small, symbolic club.
And finally, he extends his hands palm-up in an imploring gesture, begging them to agree with him.
By contrast, this speaker employs the palm-down gesture, a more dominant action in which he
attempts to calm his audience by symbolically patting them on the head, as if they're unruly children.
Finally, this man introduces the "hand chop" gesture.
A decisive gesture in which he symbolically tries to cut through the argument as if with a sharp blade.
The urge to express our emotions with our hands is so strong that we continue to gesticulate,
even when the person we are talking to is miles away at the other end of a telephone line.
The urge to communicate by body language is so deeply ingrained that if we happen to be
Japanese we even bow respectfully to our remote, invisible companion.
But, there's another whole facet of body language that conveys our emotions with even greater subtlety.
We humans have the most expressive faces in the entire animal kingdom. We take our expressions for
granted, but if we trace them back to their origins it's interesting to see how they evolved.
The Chimpanzee's face is almost as expressive as the human's. If we watch these apes in the
wild we can begin to see how we acquired our own highly mobile faces.
Originally, facial muscles were needed not for communication, but for other more basic functions.
To move the lips for instance, improving their role in drinking and feeding. As the apes suck, chew and bite,
their powerful, sensitive lips explore each object as it comes in contact with the mouth.
This involves a great deal of pulling and stretching and when they're young, the infant apes
employ their long lips as valuable sucking organs, squeezing milk from their mother's nipples.
But, even the Chimpanzee is no match for the rubber-faced human being.
[laughter]
>>First, I will show you how I kiss my girlfriend.
>>In Cumberland, they elected Albert of Somerset, County Tatem, "Ugliest Man in the World."
>>[Narrator] If we could see below the surface of the human face,
we'd discover the most complicated set of facial muscles in the world.
These muscles give us a huge range of expressions.
Some big and bold, others extremely subtle.
But, Humans and Chimps don't just share a flexible face. We also share many of the same expressions.
It's not hard for us to appreciate that these young apes are in a playful mood by simply looking at their faces.
And if we watch the way in which Chimps work themselves up into a violent mood,
it's easy for us to understand what's happening.
Whenever an animal goes on the attack, it's always slightly fearful of retaliation.
As a result, we see a face in conflict. The tightness of the lips around the mouth is a
sure sign of primate aggression, while the lowered eyebrows indicate that the attacker
is protecting its eyes in case of a fight.
The same tight-lipped face is also seen in our own species in moments of great emotional intensity.
And there it is, the tight mouth of anger.
This leaves no doubt as to the mood of these women, especially when combined with an intense stare.
One of the most primeval of all facial expressions is the staring eye.
It's something we share with other animals and it's always threatening. Because of this,
in earlier centuries, people thought there was something they called the "evil eye."
A mystical force that by staring at them could do them harm.
To protect themselves against this evil eye they would often try to "out stare" it.
To do this they made effigies of eyes which were unblinking and could perform a permanent stare
to frighten away the evil spirits. Fishermen when they went to sea wanted to protect their boats
and they did so by giving their boats a staring eye.
And all over the Mediterranean,
fishing boats are protected with elaborately painted and eternally unblinking eyes.
Because hard stares are so assertive, some military and prison rituals employ them in a special way.
At this correctional camp in Maryland, these prisoners are forbidden to stare, even to glance,
at their prison officers. The officers, who are not allowed to lay a hand on the prisoners,
make their dominance felt by the most direct and intense staring they can muster.
And the effect is one of acute intimidation and almost painful humiliation.
>>[Officer] Inmate Williams. >>[Inmate Williams] Sir.
>>[Officer] Can you hear me, Inmate Williams?! >>[Inmate] Sir, yes sir!
>>[Officer] Count off, Inmate Williams! >>[Inmate] Sir, yes sir!
>>[Officer] I'm on my toes! Sound off! >>[Inmate] Sir, yes sir!
>>[Officer] I don't want to see an eyeball on me, no where near me! If you don't hurry up
I'll put your butt outta here! Don't look at me! And you better stop pressing me!
I don't give a crap about your attitude today. [inaudible] Don't care about your attitude.
You, goddamn dummy over there! Why you won't look at me, huh?! [both officers yelling]
>>[Second officer] That's all you gotta do! Quiet! Ain't nobody asked you to come here!
Ain't nobody going to beg you to stay. >>[First officer] Put your legs together!
>>[Narrator] If you thought that staring was pretty intimidating, there's one culture that takes it even further.
This is the Maori Haka, the aggressive challenge of the indigenous people of New Zealand.
An ancient threat display still employed today in a modern context.
Taking another look at those aggressive Chimpanzees, what happens if they start to
become alarmed and fearful, if their courage begins to dessert them.
As they become more and more afraid, their expressions undergo an important change.
Their mouth corners are pulled back further and further.
This is the typical fear face of all primates, including our own species.
The best way to prove just how closely we share this expression is to examine the faces of the
panic-stricken customers on the latest fairground terror ride, the spiraling Nemesis.
Just as with frightened Chimps, these mouth corners are pulled back, exposing all the teeth.
The strange feature of this expression is that it looks, in some respects, like the human smile.
Smiling is a uniquely human expression that has evolved from the ancient fear face.
This might sound odd because we think of smiling as friendly, not fearful.
But, there's a crucial link between the two.
The fear face is sometimes used as a submissive signal saying "I'm scared, therefore I'm not a threat to you."
In other words, it's an anti-aggressive action.
It's only a small step from "I am not aggressive" to "I am friendly" and that's how the human smile evolved.
Because of the smile's anti-aggressive origins, witnessing it makes onlookers feel at ease and
responsive to the smiler.
For this reason it's been a mainstay of commercial advertising for many years.
>>Certs is a candy mint. >>Certs is a breath mint.
>>Stop, you're both right. New Certs is two mints in one. Stops bad breath in seconds. Tastiest mint of all.
>>[Narrator] The problem for these professional smilers however, is that
it's difficult to fake the expression perfectly. The fixed smile gives the game away.
For synchronized swimmers, the physical exertions of their sport make it even harder
to fake a convincing smile. They have to keep on smiling to impress the judges, but it's not easy.
One of the best places to observe the false smile is on the faces of beach-side photographer's customers.
>>[Photographer] That's it. Beautiful. Just a bit more. Beautiful. Smile!
Come on. Smile.
>>But, how precisely do we know that this smile falls short of being convincing.
The essential feature is the specialized muscles that pull the mouth corners up and the ones
around the eyes that create the "smiling eyes" are both much harder to control consciously
than the more ancient ones that simply pull the mouth corners back.
No matter how hard we try, we can't fabricate the perfect smile.
This incredibly strong link between our facial expressions and the inner workings of our body
has been put to very good use by imaginative doctors in America,
who've taken the radical step of clowning in hospital wards.
>>[Clown] I think you're having a little too much fun, you know.
You're having so much fun they might kick you out of here or something like that. [laughter]
Look at all the stuff you got in here. You've got a lot of great stuff.
>>[Narrator] And though this may appear to be a bizarre form of medical care, it's impact is extraordinary.
By making patients smile and laugh, their pain levels are reduced. Their happy facial expressions
actually release endorphins, the body's natural pain killers, into their systems.
[patient laughing]
>>[Clown] We'll wait for later to do that. >>[Patient] Please come back.
[laughter]
>>Oh, you broke his head! Oh boy! I think you should be a doctor like me.
>>[Narrator] Amazingly, the laughter created by this clowning works as well as any painkilling drug.
Such is the power of human body language.
[Laughter]
Because of our body language that reveals our true feelings, we often try to suppress it,
to hide our fears and anxieties, our longings and our hostilities.
But, it's such an efficient communication system that we usually give away a few telltale signs.
Now for most of us that's an everyday social challenge. For some people it's much more than that.
For professional poker players, the suppression of body language is a way of life.
For them, even the tiniest hint of emotion can cost a fortune.
Here at the annual world poker contest in Las Vegas, a million dollars in cash
is piled onto the table to be won or lost on the final play of the cards.
The finalists around the table are the best players in the world and needless to say,
they are masters of body language control. They epitomize the so-called "poker face,"
but even they are not entirely immune to the urges of human body language.
Careful studies of the telltale signs of poker players have revealed that there are several vital clues
that can tell you when a hand is good or bad, and when a player is bluffing.
When a player has a bad hand he stares at his cards a little longer.
When a player has a good hand his blink rate increases slightly.
When he has a good hand he looks away for a split second.
When he has a bad hand he bets with a flourish.
But, these particular players, world champions, in addition to being able to suppress their own
facial expressions and their telltale gestures,
are also masters of reading the body language of their competitors.
And this is the victor, but watch his face. This man has just won a million dollars,
but his expressions are so tightly under control that even now he can't show any emotions.
There's no smile, no shouting for joy, his poker face is like a mask.
All he allows himself eventually is a little jab in the air with a triumphant forefinger.
Most of us would make poor poker players because we're so bad at lying.
We give away our true feelings despite all our efforts to conceal them.
This woman has just been accused of stealing somebody's purse and just by looking at her
body language it's possible to spot certain clues that suggest that her denials are false.
>>[Accused woman] See I have one like that too. >>[Accuser] Yeah, this is mine.
>>[Accused woman] Well, then mine is in your car or something.
>>[Officer] Let's see your ID. >>[Accuser] We can look in my car if you want.
>>[Narrator] She brings her hand up to her mouth as if to hide the lie that she's telling.
Face touching is often a sign of attempted deception.
>>[Officer] How'd you get the purse? >>[Accused woman] I got a ride.
>>[Officer] Where'd you find it?
>>[Accused woman] It was on the floor and I automatically thought it was mine.
>>[Narrator] And she uses the "hand shrug" gesture, an unconscious disclaimer
that usually increases in frequency when lying is taking place.
>>[Officer] Well, if you thought it was yours and you just got through telling me... [woman starts to argue]
>>And her eyes blink and close more than usual.
An unconscious attempt to shut out the outside world, to cut herself off from the tension of the lie.
>>[Accused woman] I put it in my bag and my bag was open, so I thought it was mine, ok.
I picked this up and this too, automatically. Ok, the wallet was on the floor and my mind's mixed up. OK?
He don't want the baby. I want the baby. Ok?
So, I just started picking up the things that were on the floor. I'm sorry.
>>Some people seem to think that body language is trivial, but it should be clear by now
that this is not the case. Indeed, at moments of desperation we turn not just to spoken language,
but beyond that to the more primeval language of the body. A signally system that was used by
our ancestors for millions of years before the first human words were uttered.
And one that can still play a crucial role in ensuring an individual's survival.
But, even more far reaching than this, body language is so powerful that it can change the
course of history and affect the behavior of millions of people. A fact that tyrants have not overlooked.
For me, body language is far more than just a fascinating area of human biology.
It's the core of a whole new science, the study of human behavior from a zoological perspective.
And for this series too, body watching is only the beginning.
Turning a zoological eye to our own species, I'll be looking at the commonplace,
as well as the more unusual actions of the human animal.
Why, for example, for a species which so often lives in a state of extreme overpopulation,
is aggressive behavior like this the exception rather than the rule?
In fact, for the vast majority of the time, the human animal goes about his business in an
amazingly ordered way. Every individual, even in the vast social system of a city,
is aware of fitting into a very precise position in the social pattern.
I'll be looking at the human animal's sexual behavior.
What biological mechanisms are at work when we choose a partner?
And what influences why we find certain people attractive and others not?
When it comes to the courtship ritual, what are our species' typical behavior patterns?
And why at this time do we so often display juvenile characteristics such as the need to be spoon-fed?
Parental behavior, the bond between the human parent and its young is probably the strongest
of any species in the world.
And the effect of being separated can be quite devastating, especially for the parent.
What is the biological function of rites of passage, ceremonies that mark the arrival of sexual maturity?
And why do human individuals remain alive long after they cease to be able to bear children?
Finally, in this series, I'll be looking at those aspects of our behavior that appear to
have no parallels in the rest of the animal kingdom.
Is the playful behavior of our species really different from that seen in other animals?
Is body decoration different from the elaborate and colorful display plumage of birds?
What drives us to take serious risks merely for the thrill of it?
But, in the next episode, I'll turn my attention to one of our most fundamental activities: finding food.
There's no other species that consumes such an incredible variety of food.
In fact, we're so good at extracting nutrients from our environment,
that we're able to adapt to and exploit virtually every type of habitat on this planet.
And with our modern lifestyle, what's happened to our ancestral hunting urges?
Now, I've sometimes been accused of degrading man- kind, of insulting human dignity, of making man beastly.
This surprised me because I like animals and I feel proud to call myself one.
I've never looked down upon them, so to call human beings animals is not degrading to me.
It's simply honest and putting us in our place as part of the scheme of nature on the planet Earth.
[music]