THE NOT-SO-NAKED APE

At the zoo with her three children, Ellen said, “They’re naked.”

“So are we,” I retorted.

“They don’t look as nice.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know. It’s just wrong.”

We peered through the thick pane of glass at the wriggling colony of naked mole rats. Apart from a few whiskers and tufts between the toes, this rodent has no hair, an unusual condition among mammals.1 They’re about the size and shape of a thick sausage, with loose, wrinkled, translucent skin. I felt both attracted and repulsed as I watched one misguided fellow try to run through a plastic wall instead of skedaddling through the tunnel to the pile of pink, pulsating sausages in the corner.

Later, watching Ngozi the gorilla, I asked eleven-year-old Molly if she would still adore gorillas as much if they lost their fur.

She said, “Fur doesn’t matter. I would like them equally.”

Then she changed her mind. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t. Because if they didn’t have hair they’d be grosser.”

“We don’t think we’re gross, and we don’t have fur.”

Molly let out a high-pitched squeal at the paradox she’d stumbled into.

“Isn’t that weird?” I asked.

She agreed. If someone had lots of hair on them, “they’d look like kind of a monkey.” Based on the look on her face, I deduced she’d rather avoid that persona.

How is it that naked, wrinkled skin on other creatures seems so strange, while it’s difficult to think of our own skin any other way?