From top to toe, human observer Desmond Morris takes on a subject that has fascinated mankind for millenniums in his new book, “The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body” (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95).

A zoologist who became famous for his observations on humankind in his 1967 book “The Naked Ape,” Morris has produced more than 40 volumes, studying people, dogs, cats and horses, and how they behave.

But people, and especially their playfulness, are what fascinate him most, and it shows as he proceeds from hair to foot to observe the ladies.

While humans have generally shed most body hair as they evolved, head hair remained as a visual display, Morris says. So it should come as no surprise, he writes, that “it has been shown off, concealed, styled, cut, trimmed, extended, straightened, waved, put up, let down, colored and decorated in a thousand ways.”

Hair has been everything from woman’s crowning glory to the source of religious taboos.

Of particular note was the “big hair” look popular in the South in the 1980s, which he calls “extrovert and cheerfully assertive.”

Moving to the other extreme, Morris observes that women have suffered during the years in an effort to have feet that appear ultrafeminine and dainty.

“Their feet have been squeezed, squashed, cramped and crushed in pursuit of small-foot beauty,” he writes.

Three devices have been used to this end: shoes too tight, to make feet look smaller; shoes too pointed, to make feet look streamlined; and shoes with high heels, to make feet look shorter.

In between head and foot, Morris has something to say about virtually every body part, some of which is better left out of the family newspaper. Suffice it to say that, in a discussion of piercing and ornamentation, he observes: “As potential areas for body decoration, the buttocks provide little scope. They are too private for displaying the handiwork and too sat-upon for the attachment of ornaments.”

Other Morris observations:

¢ Female hands are superior to male hands in one important way: They are more flexible.

¢ Politicians have generally kept out of matters of beauty, but at one point in 18th-century England, they felt the need to pass a law against lip coloring because some males feared they would be lured into wedlock by the sight of red-lipped women.

¢ While men in Western nations tend to regard the female neck merely as something to support her head, in Japan, the back of a woman’s neck is considered one of her most sexually tantalizing features.