The demographic problem was already present in The Naked Ape, but here Morris discusses it at length. It is indeed extraordinary that overall we are doing so well under such unnatural conditions, and it tells us a lot about the plasticity of our species.
In the modern life and its crowded places, we tend to behave as animals in captivity. The underlying question is: How beings used to living in tribes of at most hundreds of individuals can cope with our modern society and its super-tribes of millions? The city, writes Morris, is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. The Human Zoo still deals with the human animal, but this time the focus is on the social ties that we develop between each other and the sort of society in which we live.
Newer editions are available, as you can see in the author's bibliography. The Human Zoo (1969) is his follow-up book, thus when I found a copy of it in a second-hand bookshop I happily bought it (probably equally motivated by the lovely vintage yellow cover!).
Back in the days when I was a biology student in Lausanne I had a great time reading Desmond Morris' best seller The Naked Ape (1967), in which the British zoologist discusses what sort of curious social animals we are-and he does so with a lot of wit and humor.
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