(born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology.

After being demobilised in 1948, he held his first one-man show of his own paintings at the Swindon Arts Centre, and studied zoology at the University of Birmingham.

[1] Also in 1950, Desmond Morris wrote and directed two surrealist films, Time Flower and The Butterfly and the Pin.

[1] In 1957 he organised an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, showing paintings and drawings composed by common chimpanzees.

In 1958 he co-organised an exhibition, The Lost Image, which compared pictures by infants, human adults, and apes, at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

[1] Morris's books include The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal,[3] published in 1967.

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/16) with Morris, in 2015, for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.

[2] While a director of the club, he designed its ox-head badge based on a Minoan-style bull's head, which remains in use to this day.

For instance, geneticist Adam Rutherford writes that Morris commits "the scientific sin of the 'just-so' story – speculation that sounds appealing but cannot be tested or is devoid of evidence".