Desmond Morris

So, to sum up - as the human sexes advanced down their evolutionary pathway, towards greater and greater neoteny, the males behaved in a more and more childlike way, while showing fewer physical changes, while the females developed more and more childlike physical qualities, while showing fewer childlike mental qualities.

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As a species we are so preoccupied with mass-produced and mass-destroying violence at the present time, that we are apt to lose our objectivity when discussing this subject. It is a fact that the most level-headed intellectuals frequently become violently aggressive when discussing the urgent need to suppress aggression. This is not surprising. We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office. Not a long term, as species go, but an amazingly eventful one. But before we examine our own bizarre perfections of attack and defense, we must examine the basic nature of violence in the spearless, gunless, bombless worid of animals.

Animals fight among themselves for one of two very good reasons: either to establish their dominance in a social hierarchy, or to establish their territorial rights over a particular piece of ground.