The Nature of Sex: The Ins and Outs of Mating in the Animal Kingdom

by Carin Bondar

In Wild Sex, 'biologist with a twist' Carin Bondar presents the fascinating diversity of the reproductive habits of the animal kingdom, and through approachable explanations and humorous examples succeeds in making an eternally popular subject into a book of international appeal. Her web series of the same name attracted over 12 million views, and in this richly diverse book she examines the sexual strategies and reproductive structures of the hyena, earwig and guppy, among other creatures.

Dr Bondar explains that until approximately 500 million years ago sex was a 'mere trickle of DNA', a thoughtless merging of cells. With the evolution of sexual organs as we know them, social hierarchies have also developed, dictated by the sexual dynamics between creatures of each species. She examines the mechanics of sexual intercourse between certain animals, describing differing tactics of seduction, from 'coercion' to 'titillation', showing images of different penises, and comparing the cost of reproductive cells in females (high) and males (low). She examines the violent methods used by some animals to inseminate females, from the bed-bug's spiked, barbed penis to the 'ballistic' spiral-shaped penis of the duck. She then explores the probability that other animals experience pleasure from sex, based on observation of their behaviour related to choosing a mate based on penis-size or other pleasure-inducing appendages. Finally, Dr Bondar describes matriarchal animal societies, noting that when the female has the reproductive power, or 'penis power', she also possesses social dominance in the group.

Dr Bondar reiterates that sex in the animal kingdom determines how males and females relate to each other, and how their population will develop. Of course, this extends to our own society as well, and her vividly written and scrupulously researched book encourages us all to think about sex - if not more frequently, then certainly more profoundly.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Biology, Nature, Animals, Audiobook, Evolution

400 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2015

About the author

Carin Bondar is a PhD Biologist, author and TV/Web Host. She is a psychotherapist, jungle explorer, glass artist, former ballerina, TED speaker and mother of 4. Despite being fabulous, Dr. Carin is forgetful and sometimes disorganized. She loves to cook - and although dinner may reach the table later than usual, it's almost always delicious.

Reviews

[Miranda Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally speaking, it takes two to tango in the animal kingdom.

Birds, bees, trees, fleas - they're all doing it. All the time.

Just think about that.

All. The. Time.

...the process of sex is so much more than the mere meeting of sperm and egg.

Dr Bondar knows that the animal kingdom is full of wild things - and creative ones too.

It seems people just love to hear about sex...It's only natural for us to be curious about how the process takes place in other creatures.

In this book, Dr Bondar discusses a huge variety of mating methods from animals across the world - from the wooing to the woo-hooing, she covers it all.

This book was...surprisingly tasteful and a little on the bland side.

This book is chock full of crazy-interesting factoids and snippets of various animals and insects.

It was a bit much to cover THAT many species in one book, and after a while I got a little lost with what creatures we were talking about.

I would've preferred to learn about less creatures but more development to those sections rather than whipping through the creatures.

One nice thing to note that this was never terribly graphic or seemed gross.

I feel like this book could've gone a completely different direction but Dr Bondar gave this subject a clinician's eye and treated the subject with detached curiosity - it was interesting to learn about mating calls and the surprisingly creative ways invertebrates procreate.

All in all, it was certainly a different type of book and I quite enjoyed reading it!

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[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was raised on a farm where I learned about sex way before puberty & now have grandkids, so what more is there for me learn about sex? Plenty! Most everything does it, but how & for what environmental advantage(s) is fascinating. As Bondar correctly points out, we have a fairly unique point of view of sex. We're one of the few species that do it for fun, but we're not the only species that does, thus a chapter devoted to masturbation.

I wish I could find the table of contents to post here because that would give a great idea of all the different angles from which she looked at it. There are chapters on homosexuality, hermaphrodites, dad's raising broods, moms eating dads, moms & dads working together to raise youngsters that might not belong to either & more. Best of all, she relates the latest hypotheses on why they evolved this way.

Sex is generally an antagonistic dance between sexes. Generally, the female has the most resources invested in any offspring, so she wants to make sure they go to the very best male. Males have to compete with each other & either please or rape the female to spread their seed. Pleasing can mean sacrificing themselves as a meal to breaking off their equipment in the female to cut down on their competition's access to her eggs. Sometimes it means dueling with another of their species to see who will be which sex. (That's usually done in hermaphrodites like snails with lots of stabbing.) It's horrific, but it's also the means of insuring the fittest make the best use of limited resources.

Resource scarcity: food, habitat, time, & health. It's a recurring theme. The difference in a good gift & a fake one can mean the difference in life or death for a brood. Some systems are so parsimonious that the female eating male's seed &/or sexual parts make the difference.

Bondar took me on an incredible journey through the animal kingdom & it was fascinating all the way. The book was well narrated, too. I do have a few nitpicks, though. She always used common names followed by Latin names. That's fine when there might be confusion in the common names or within the same species. Other times, it was just irritating. I don't want to know them all.

She also used a biologically specific vocabulary & that can be a bit daunting. She was very good at explaining terms within the text, but if you're not conversant in them (I'm not!) they can get a bit bewildering at times. I'm not knocking her use of them, even though I had to pause to think about them sometimes. She taught me a lot & stretched my mind some, but just be aware of this tendency, especially if you don't like it.

The book was a bit longer than I really wanted & yet I could tell she had plenty more to say. A few times I wish she had gone into more detail. I have a feeling she could have written a book about each chapter. Instead, we get a very brief overview with the most salient points. It's a bigger subject than I realized & I think she did a great job of boiling it down to show the major themes. Highly recommended.

[Rama Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

The wild side of wildlife

Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra is one of the greatest classics written about erotica that deals with the human component of sexual pleasure in the most sensual way possible. Luckily, this is possible only for humans because sex in animal kingdom is wild, mysterious and extremely challenging. It could even be very violent. The author discusses the tactics of courting, seduction, and the difficulties in the mechanics of animal sex.

Nature is intense and could be aggressive in its evolutionary challenges. The blue whale's penis weights around 400 lbs. and it could be between 8 to 12 feet long. Such a heavy weaponry seems dangerous but not so much for its own species. The female ducks have evolved corkscrew vaginas to stop unwanted advances of male ducks. The females of blanket octopus may reach 2 m (6.6 ft) in length, but the males are about 2.4 cm. The weight ratio is at least 10,000:1 and can reach as much as 40,000:1. Sexual cannibalism is common among most predatory species of mantises. It is observed that male-female encounters result in male being devoured by female during fertilization and is still able to continue the sperm deposit successfully!

Author Carin Bondar is fascinating and amusing in her narratives. The reader will find that animal intercourse is not a fun experience. In fact, it is not so much about enjoying, but it is about the reproduction and survival of its species.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and interesting, with enough of a sidelong sense of humor to bypass the "blush" and "EW" reflexes. Dr. Bondar indulges a bit more in the Latin names and technical terms than someone like Mary Roach, enough so that there's a glossary in the back.

Unrelated to the text, I laughed out loud when I saw that my library had carefully added a strip of label tape clarifying that the all-caps spine title of WILD SEX referred to "mating in the animal kingdom". Just in case some patron finds this book while browsing and believes that they've discovered a heretofore unknown bonanza of erotica in the animal biology section...

[St. Gerard Expectant Mothers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always been fascinated by animal biology and life sciences particular concerning wildlife information. From the National Geographic magazine to nature shows, animals are truly a fascinating breed of species. In Carin Bondar's book Wild Sex, she examines the mating habits and rituals of the animal kingdom and how the breeding process is almost very similar to that of human beings.



Did you know that size does matter to the tropical freshwater swordtail fish? Male swordtails with longer tails do not attract the same response from the female tribe who would rather select the ones with shorter tails due to the fact that the longer tails attract predators who easily can spot them in a group. Pretty much, the females would rather have their eggs fertilized by shorter males than to be eaten by their enemies.



What about the preening peacock with the bigger, lush tail feathers? The males with the nicer rack attract the females easier than the ones who try to overcompensate. Basically, the author points out that the animal kingdom is like one big pick-up bar where anything goes.



Whether it is practicing homosexual behavior (yes some animals do have gay sex), transvestitism (changing their genders), intersex reproduction (yes, they have both winkies), engaging in violent courtship and sexual behavior (don't mention rape) or interspecies lovemaking (you can't get that out of your head), this certainly is an interesting book that covers a wide array of animal behavior and practices. For those that enjoy the life sciences and biology, do pick this one up!

It is an enjoyable nonfiction romp.

[Care · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this. I love biology and all the reproductive quirks that come along with the animal kingdom. The first portion was, unfortunately, repetitive, harping on example after example of the same concept and repeating the reasoning until I was thoroughly bored. The second portion was better but still harkened back to examples from the first portion as if readers were too dumb to remember them. Still, this middle portion was the most original, best constructed, and most memorable. The final section was uninspired and none of the separate chapters were repetitive, but by this point in the book, I was done with the entire book and skim read the final chapters. The author was hung up on showing her Latin skills (got annoying after about 20 pages) and didn't take enough time to reflect on the purpose of these evolutionary traits. I wish there was a fuller discussion on sexual selection and not just randomly strung together examples of weird animal sex stuff. I would recommend skim reading this or examing chapters on subjects you're interested in, but the whole book was too uninspired, academically dry, and monotonous for full-on reading.

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough and comprehensive description of how reproduction happens in the animal kingdom. Often gruesome and fascinating. The writing is accessible with many new and bizarre science words! Her main point is that reproduction is the root behind many animal behaviors.

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me tell you about the birds and the bees
And the flowers and the trees
And the moon up above
And a thing called "Love"
- Jewel Akens

Wild Sex is a compendium of facts about the birds and the bees (both literally and figuratively) and the many ways in which animal species find a mate, procreate and raise their young. Needless to say, mother nature (aka evolution by natural selection) has come up with many novel solutions to this most important of biological challenges. Many different types of competition have produced many unique solutions.

Possibly the most important driver is that the breeding decisions for females is more energetically important than they are for males, making them choosier (since production of an egg is more resource intensive than production of sperm). However, other forms of competition exist, including:
- Males competing with each other for breeding opportunities with females
- Females competing with each other for breeding opportunities with the fittest males
- Siblings completing amongst themselves for limited resources
- Species competing with each other to survive

If you think this competition takes place on an even playing field with strict adherence to the rules, then you probably don’t have a good understanding of evolutionary theory because natural selection doesn’t care about fairness … it only needs to provide a survival or reproductive advantage. As they say “all is fair in love and war”. Violence, trickery, thievery, camouflage, chemical warfare, auditory warfare, and biological warfare are all potentially successful mating strategies and they take place on the macroscopic as well as microscopic level. I think it’s fair to say that our human notion of romantic love isn’t the primary driving force for reproduction among other species.

In other words, it’s a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world out there … or perhaps more accurately … it’s a ‘male bed bug traumatically inseminates a female bed bug by stabbing her in abdomen with his knifelike intromittent organ before injecting his sperm into the wound’ world out there (an analogy that should give you some idea of what the book is like).

On the up-side, the book contains a number of interesting examples as to how nature has solved the problem of reproduction. On the down-side, the book just didn’t hold my interest. I think this was due to the fact that little attempt was made to craft a compelling narrative or create any continuity in the text. The book is divided in subject areas, but each largely consists of a fact about one species followed by another fact about a different species. Repeat and repeat again. It’s like reading a list of bullet points (albeit, ones that mostly consist of detailed descriptions of insect sex) that goes on for 240 pages.

[Alicja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mam mieszane odczucia. Z jednej strony świetna książka popularno-naukowa, z której można wyciągnąć dużo ciekawostek. Z drugiej jest ich tak wiele, że o większości zapominałam już kilka stron dalej.
Co fajne - na końcu książki jest słowniczek z różnymi wyrażeniami, które dla kogoś niezagłębionego w naukowe nazewnictwo napewno dużo rozjaśnią. Widać tu ogromną wiedzę i ogromny reaserch. Generalnie można by tu pofilozofować jak to nasze życie odbiega od innych pod względem priorytetów i w zasadzie wszystkiego innego. Przyjemnie się czytało ale właśnie brakowało mi raz na parę rozdziałów skupienia się na konkretnym gatuneku i opisaniu jego procesów kopulacyjnych od ‘a’ do ‘z’, a nie tak rozrzucone po całej książce.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. Well written and superbly fascinating.

[Karolina Sosnowska · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://tanayahczyta.wordpress.com/20...

[Agnieszka Kalus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Świat przyrody jest fascynujący, a autorka ciekawie o nim pisze, sięgając po setki przykładów.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess if I were to give a true rating it would be around 3.5, but I like to round up. The title and back description of the book drew me in and I thought it would straddle the line between entertaining and informational. It was much more academic than I expected it to be, but then not overly so. There were some chapters and a number of pages that I would completely lose interest in and others that were highly entertaining and contained interesting information that I completely had no prior knowledge of. I don't regret reading this and I feel satisfied with the amount of knowledge I got from this book. It was one of those that ended up being worth it for the gems of information.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times hilarious and outrageous. From the spiders that give heavily wrapped goodies to their amours to prolong their distraction, to the apparent lack of equipment in snails and slugs, this is just fascinating.

As I pointed out while reading, just be glad we're at the top of the chain here. There seems to be little affection and love in many of the (dare I say it?) "lower" animals.

I do have issues with the authors gyrations to explain every wacky behavior through evolution. Face it, not everything makes sense, and trying to justify contradictory species shouldn't drag Darwin into it.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very informative, and Bondar didn't shy away from anything. Honestly; it was refreshing to read a book like this, one that is filled with knowledge about the science behind reproduction in the animal kingdom. Whether the animal is a Fur seal, Homo Sapiens, or a house fly, Bondar has a never-ending supply of gruesome (and sometimes hilarious) tactics, dark humor, and a large array of species. I would recommend this to anyone who is curious about this subject, whether shy about it or not.

[Mark Garn · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Dr. Bondar's book I have a whole new view of "Life" on our planet. Every thing about sex I will ever want to know, and maybe a few things I wish I didn't, are in this book. I think anyone
who wants to write si-fi, could get a lot of good ideas about alien physiology. I mean, why go to other planets when the aliens are here! Dr. Bondar, there is always room at my fantasy dinner table for you.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't finish this. I was so excited to read it, but a lot of it was vague, jumped all over the place. I got to 50% before quitting. the author clearly knows her stuff, but this failed to deliver on its promises, and massively felt like a first draft.

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars - I really wanted to like this book. I love books about biology, ecology, and behavior, and honestly, who isn’t at least a little curious about the mating rituals of other species?

But this book just annoyed me. I think it was more the writing style than the content, although the content was all over the place as well. First of all, it’s written like a blog, not a book. There are countless interruptions such as (see Arrested Development) where she refers to other chapters. Since it’s a book with chapters and not a blog with three dozen separate posts, this felt irrelevant. Most people read books in chronological order, and aren’t going to hop around.

Then there were the parenthesis. I’m not just talking about where she pops in the Latin name of an animal after the common name, those were tolerable. I’m talking about the overly repetitive, clarifying parenthetical phrases that could have been edited out by writing more clearly to begin with, or by creating separate sentences. There were so many it was distracting.

I imagine it can be challenging writing about scientific processes for Lehman, but I feel it’s important to write for one audience or the other, not both. This would have cut down on the sheer number of phrases or words that needed to be clarified (with more parenthesis), and would have made the writing more... legitimate?

There was a good deal of anthropomorphism and the casual interjection of phrases we use to describe human behavior, but which don’t have any place in a book about science. For instance, “child abuse”, instead of “ violence towards offspring”.

On the flip side, in the scientific world it’s more appropriate to say, “sexual coercion” than it is to say, “rape”, but she had no problem not using the word rape. It felt inconsistent, as if she was writing for us non-scientists, but had to make certain points to make sure she’d be taken seriously if a biologist read it.

Lastly, each chapter had myriad examples. In stead of learning about everything from fruit flies, whales, mice and blue footed boobies all in the same chapter, I’d have preferred fewer chapters that focused more information on specific species.

There were some interesting points, and I learned some useless facts, but it wasn’t that enjoyable. Disappointing.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ta książka ukazała mi niezliczone możliwości i warianty zachowań, które występują w świecie zwierząt. Autorka wykazałą się ogromną wiedzą oraz zebrała i przedstawiła ją w interesujący sposób. Jednakże, pomimo próby ustrukturyzowania książki (podział na trzy sekcje: Spotkanie, Seks, Następstwa), brakowało struktury w układzie rozdziałów w ramach wymienionych sekcji.

Ciekawostka 1:
Zarówno sikorki, jak i koniki polne mieszkające w miastach/przy drogach, komunikują się z partnerami przy użyciu dźwięków o wyższej częstotliwości niż ich wiejscy kuzyni.

Ciekawostka 2:
Pośród kręgowców, monogamia jest najczęściej obserwowana w grupie ptaków.

Ciekawostka 3:
Ejakulat może zawierać liczne substancje, na przykład takie, które manipulują układem odpornościowym, rozrodczym, zachowaniem po stosunku oraz stanem otworu pochwowego samicy. Ejakulat ma także znaczną wartość odżywczą - u chrząszczy Bruchidius dorsalis samce przekazują samicom ejakulat w ilości odpowiadającej 7% wagi ciała samca.

Ciekawostka 4:
U pszczół (gatunki Apis), dziewicze królowe odbywają lot godowy i otrzymują nasienie od 10-20 trutni. Jest to jedyna okazja dla królowej, aby zebrać plemniki, jednakże królowe po locie godowym odrzucają ponad 90% ejakulatu, a jedynie 2,5% zostanie długotrwale zmagazynowane.

Ciekawostka 5:
Bakulum (kość prącia) występuje u samców różnych gatunków wszystkich rzędów ssaków. Bakula są heterotypowe, czyli powstają z tkanki kostnej wytworzonej poza szkieletem. Są syntetyzowane z tkanki łącznej na końcu dystalnym (na czubku) penisa.

Ciekawostka 6:
Strategia rozwojowa torbaczy mogła wyewoluować, aby dać rodzicom możliwość przerwania ciąży w dowolnym momencie z minimalnymi biologicznymi stratami, ponieważ warunki środowiskowe w australijskim buszu są bardzo zmienne. Ponadto, matka może dokonać resorpcji materiału reprodukcyjnego po terminacji ciąży.

[Magda (fair.o.ksiazkach) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Od dziecka fascynował mnie świat zwierząt. Uwielbiałam zbierać albumy z fauną Afryki czy Australii a w wakacje potrafiłam oglądać prawie codziennie programy na Animal Planet lub National Geographic Channel po kilka godzin. Dlatego, gdy dowiedziałam się, że ukazała się książka opisująca tak intrygujące i tajemnicze dla mnie zjawisko seksu zwierząt - musiałam ją przeczytać.

Muszę przyznać, że nigdy wcześniej nie trzymałam w ręku tak fachowej literatury na temat zwierzęcego życia intymnego. Biolog Carin Bondar przedstawia nam ten dziki seks w sposób przystępny, z lekką dozą humoru. Książka jest jednak nafaszerowana biologicznym słownictwem naukowym, które (przynajmniej mnie) sprawia trudność w wymówieniu, a co dopiero w zrozumieniu jego znaczenia. Na szczęście autorka ratuje nas słowniczkiem znajdującym się na końcu książki, z którego pomocy możemy skorzystać w trakcie lektury.

„Dziki seks" został podzielony na trzy części: Spotkanie (część opisująca zaloty/gody różnych gatunków zwierząt), Seks (przedstawiająca złożony proces zwierzęcej kopulacji) oraz Następstwa (część opisująca zwyczaje/praktyki rodzicielskie różnych gatunków). Taka struktura książki pozwala w kompleksowy sposób przedstawić, jak skomplikowana, trudna i niebezpieczna jest reprodukcja w królestwie zwierząt (sama autorka stwierdza nawet, że seks ludzki w porównaniu z tym zwierzęcym jest niesamowicie nudny). Carin Bondar pokazuje nam, jak wiele rożnych strategii i praktyk stosują zwierzęta w dążeniu do skutecznej reprodukcji i że często sam akt seksualny dla wielu gatunków nie jest niczym przyjemnym, a wręcz przeciwnie, może się okazać niebezpieczny, np. zjadanie partnera po odbyciu stosunku.

Książka z pewnością spodoba się tym, którzy interesują się fauną naszej planety. "Dziki seks" jest nafaszerowany pikantnymi, ale często przerażającymi ciekawostkami z intymnego życia zwierząt. Nie polecam jednak tej lektury do poduszki - znaczna część faktów na temat zwierzęcego seksu może Was zniesmaczyć!

[Hasib · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wild Sex serves as a primer on the biological and cellular mechanisms of reproduction and its evolutionary extrapolations. While there are descriptions of allele distribution and sexual selection, they are brief and deficient. I found it surprising that other reviewers' scrutinized the book for being too "boring" and academic. On the contrary, I found the author's writing to be lacking in the expository style beseeming a scientific book of this nature. There were many lines apropos of pop-science, sensationalist internet articles rather than academic prose. However, interlaced with these were the fascinating facts that readers would expect in a book about the science of sex. Overall, I was disappointed the author did not describe in more detail genetic variation in relation to reproductive strategies, allele frequency in variant populations, and the impact of selective pressures on fitness parameters within a given environment. This may be a good introductory title for those unfamiliar with reproductive biology, but I found it too elementary to placate my evolutionary inquiries.

[Mark Avery · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a review about how animals beget other animals. It must be quite difficult to write about sex in a way that is neither coy nor coarse and which will keep the attention of the reader with whatever moral and personal baggage they might bring to the subject.

The author tells us of her IUD (which I found slightly too much information) and skips through the pages of this book with an open, ‘there’s nothing to be embarrassed about here’ tone which works pretty well. The trouble was, I didn’t find the subject terribly interesting. There were interesting passages of intercourse of course, but half way through the book, facing chapters on sexually transmitted infections and dirty old men my interest was beginning to fade out rapidly.

This is a good review and explanation of the ins and outs of mating in the animal kingdom but it didn’t really grab my attention in a way that I thought it might.

This review first appeared on Mark Avery's blog on 2 December 2016 http://markavery.info/2016/12/02/book...

[Erica Broughton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed it, lots of fascinating examples. Did raise some issues for me though. Author makes a big deal out of the fact that homosexual sex is super common in nature so arguments that it's 'unnatural' are wrong. Although I absolutely agree that homosexuality is totally normal and not a bad thing, the argument the author gave falls apart quickly in the next section of the book, which was all about how common rape and sexual coercion are in animals. The argument that animals do it so it's ok gets ugly really quickly here.

The postscript also talked about how modern, Western humans have opted out of reproductive fitness with our birth control and that monogamy is explained only by our emotions. Both these feel untrue to me, as our social structure and reproductive success have shifted to favor producing a smaller number of offspring that will themselves be more successful, rather than just a large number of kids. I wish she would have unpacked those issues more instead of summarizing human sexuality as just playing by different rules than other animals.

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book – unexpected things, even. For instance, the question of virginity is actually meaningful for some species, unlike people!
The title, _Wild Sex_, does not refer to unbridled, anything goes, sex. It's sex of wild animals in the wild. Some animals do amazing things to "get their rocks off". But seriously, it is clear that the purpose of the whole thing is to spread the genes and DNA of the individual! The violence and jealousy and rivalry all have the same source. I think that I have come out with a more general understanding of the motivations of other types of animals. And I can definitely see the source of a lot of human activities and hangups. And I can see where a lot of religious hangups come from, although I doubt that every religious person will see it that way!
Worthwhile investment of time :-)

[Inês Ramires · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about all the process of mating in the animal kingdom, from the courtship and finding a mate to the period where animals get old and start senescence. It is very interesting and informative about sexual biology with some humor in between. But i probably wouldn't recomend it to someone without bases in biology or great interest in biology, since it has a lot of technical terms and information (they are explain through the text, but i'm a biologist and i don't know if someone who is not, would undestand it so well). Overall really like it, and made me want to know more about the subject.

[Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting facts about mating and reproduction! People talk what’s “natural.” I don’t know what they mean, because what happens in nature is weird and often violent.

I listened to the book and sometimes it was a slog, just a listing of facts more than a narrative. But I wanted to keep listening so I could learn more about detachable genitals and male spiders making gifts for female spiders.

[maria🪴 · Rating 3 out of 5]

nie była to niestety najbardziej fascynująca lektura, choć tematyka mogła sugerować inaczej. na pewno w momencie czytania niektóre przykłady wydają się fascynujące, ale czy faktycznie coś z tego wszystkiego zapamiętałam? chyba niewiele, bo mimo że ta książka próbowała być zabawna i momentami sarkastyczna, to natłok naukowej terminologii czasami nie ułatwiał mi przyswajania treści. męczyłam ją bardzo długo i cieszę się, że mam to za sobą.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wild sex? Super interesting, right? Meh.

DNF at 14%. There are lots of snippets and factoids that are repetitive and become boring. It might change, but looking over some reviews it looks like it didn't. This sat on my currently reading shelf for something like 5 months, 4 of them me not even wanting to touch it, before I gave up.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

[Brianne S · Rating 2 out of 5]

It could have been sooo good, but just wasn't. The author did a tremendous amount of research for the book, but didn't thread any of it together to back up the main points of each chapter. It actually just felt like diarrhea of facts mixed in with the author's personal commentary. I finished it to the end hoping it would eventually come together, but no.

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only reason I gave this book 3 stars is because it has interesting info in it. I hate when people use the cultural binary constructs of he/she in relation to animals- animals have no idea about how to be a “woman” and attracting stubborn “males” and “males” are not all aggressive towards mating. Oh well, I now have some fun facts about animal sex.