Bitch: On the Female of the Species

by Lucy Cooke

A fierce, funny, and revolutionary look at the queens of the animal kingdom  

Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser.  

Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted.  

In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun. 

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

12 pages, Audiobook

First published March 3, 2022

Reviews

[Petra X]

RTC, but briefly, the book has an overall agenda to prove that females (or 'the egg-bearing parent' as the author would prefer) can do everything males can do in the animal kingdom - lead, be aggressive, have promiscuous sex, rip other animals apart etc. This succeeds, and the science is excellent but the thesis got wearisome in parts. How to rate it is difficult. At times it was a 10 star, really relevatory, at other times a 2 star, and I'm like ok, you don't have to push the feminist, anti-unreconstructed male point of view yet again. RTC
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Trigger warnings for update: ALL! don't say I didn't warn you. Have a mirror handy. Danish pig farmers have

discovered that artificial insemination is more effective if preceded by manual stimulation of the clitoris, cervix and flanks. So they’ve taken a practical approach and developed a special five-step sow stimulation routine, with graphic images for guidance.

Seduction starts with the farmer stimulating the sow with a fist, moves on to massaging her hips and finishes with the farmer sitting on her back to mimic the weight of the mating male on her. This sow seduction formula results in 6 per cent more babies than going in straight with a cold hard syringe, but may put some off a career in pig farming.

Look at your face in the mirror.
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Now I'm past the early chapters and the lingering sour taste of females as 'the egg-bearing parent' has kind of faded and we are out of all that wokery, the book has become a great deal more interesting. It is a bit unbalanced with heavy science and fairly light-hearted field research anecdotes but the author comes across as having an interesting sense of humour with little quips slipped in here and there. I'm enjoying the book!
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Male sage grouse have been seen "attempting to mate with dried cowpats when there are no females around... the bar is set pretty low evidently." Which explains why the females are so drab, no need for flashy colours and make up, the males will fuck anything.

Being an entirely unreconstructed person I was kind of open-mouthed at the necessity for the author to display her woke credentials in an author's note in a science book. It is a very woke book, "I may refer to an animal's genitalia as being 'masculinized' or a brain being 'feminized' as this was the original scientific description. Such gendered terms needn't and shouldn't be used to describe animals' sex characteristics and behaviours in scholarly realms today. I also use gendered terms such as 'mother' and 'father' to describe animals..." She then goes on to deine mother as meaning the egg-producing parent. I'm wondering how the title, Bitch, fits into all this virtual-signalling?

But I thought ok, I bought this book because Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is my favourite anthropologist-author. A feminist she is the absolute antithesis of David Attenborough for whom males rule supreme in the animal world. The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture shows lions as studs and babysitters, allowed to stay by the pride of females who hunt and kill, and get rid of the lions that don't live up to their promise.

I'm finding the book an example of 'the best form of defence is attack' - Darwin and all the male scientists who thought along the lines of males are interesting, females are there to breed - get it time and time again in different ways whether out and out attack or damning with a bit of faint praise. But it isn't all like that. There is a lot of textbook-dry science about the affect of testosterone, genes and all the xy stuff (in the case of platypuses who instead of the rather general XX chromosomes for female and XY for male have XXXXXXXXXX for female and XXXXXYYYYY for male. They are mammals but lay eggs. Mixed up creatures, but happy ones, it seems.

Pornithology - the science of recording bird sex!

[LIsa Noell "Rocking the chutzpah!" · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to Basic books, Lucy Cooke and Netgalley. Let's just get one thing straight, and that is the fact that Lucy just rocks my socks off. What she does is always done well! All my best friends ever have always been bitches. Yep, I was happily their bitch too! I've had friends, they were acquaintances. Bitches are the rulers of the pack. However, in these packs there is only one bitch! If that's what it takes to keep the males in their place? Then heel! "Cue the whips!" I've always loved Hyenas, but it was great hearing about the rest too. One of my favorite tales is the female Octopus doing the deed with the male, then ripping off his "organ" and tossing it away! 😍 I love that!

[Rosh (will be MiA for a fortnight!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: Not as misandrist as I had assumed. Way funnier than I had anticipated! Insightful, relevant, comprehensive, mind-blowing. Go for it!

Science is always said to be objective. But we need to ask ourselves how objective can a subject be if it has excluded the thoughts of half of the world’s population, if it has observed phenomena through masculine-filtered lenses, if it has dismissed any change in traditional masculine superiority as an aberration than as a possible norm. British zoologist and digital personality Lucy Cooke raises an array of questions and provides a throng of answers about various elements of nature where things aren’t quite what we have been taught either in school or through research papers or even through television documentaries.

In one of her Youtube videos, Cooke says, “If you want to tell a story and reach a wider audience, it helps if you are a bit playful about it.” She applies this principle with heart and soul to this book. Every anecdote is peppered with an underlying tone of fun, and every chapter shines a spotlight on her sense of humour.

Right at the start, we have the author's note on the use of language, and here itself, the tone of the book is set. The author makes it clear why we have dual gender-based terms in biology, how the terms are used in the book, and how we should refrain from using the terms unless needed. As we all know, the concept of gender is very fluid, so the traditional theory of the male and female binary doesn’t stand on its feet anymore. Her note clarifies why she resorts to these words at times, while still declaring, “Gendered ideas based on binary sex are nonsense."

Most biology/zoology textbooks teach us things from the perspective of the male of the species. When it comes to females, the information is limited to mothering a baby and sometimes, being the queen of a colony. So the content of this book took me by surprise. Thanks to the documentaries of my favourite nature guru Sir David Attenborough, I did know a few of the facts, such as the female praying mantis biting off the head of her “lover” while the poor guy is indulging in copulation, the story of Darwin’s finches, or the mating hierarchy of certain ape groups. But most of the animal anecdotes were totally new to me. (I am never going to look at meerkats or ducks the same way again! *shudder*)

Fighting for a mate, queening over a group or colony, “pleasuring themselves”, the truth about monogamy, “virgin births”, power struggles,… the book throws one interesting chapter after another, all ideas being supported by ample data and examples from the animal world. As Cooke herself declares, it is high time the “sexist mythology in biology and zoology” is shattered. Along the way, she raises awareness about other topics such as climate change and the impact it is having on the natural world.

The author’s methodology ensures that even those unfamiliar with the animal world will comprehend her points. Her writing is balanced with plenty of light-hearted remarks, multiple anecdotes, and an empathetic approach. She also peppers the content with a few examples from movies such as ‘Finding Nemo’, making it even more relatable. It does get a bit technical at times, but you can safely skip over anything you find esoteric without hampering your understanding of the book. As long as you were able to understand that the animal on the cover is a hyena and not a dog, you’re good to go. 😉

While I loved almost all the content, my favourite has to be the final chapter, in which she shatters the myth of gender duality in nature. All those naysayers who declare that homosexuality isn’t “natural” and “God made two genders”, you’ve got a rethink coming your way!

Cooke doesn’t just stop at revealing examples from nature. Time and again, she highlights examples of female biologists and zoologists whose names have been pushed under the radar for propagating an “incorrect” or “impossible” hypothesis about the female of any animal species. Men have traditionally been considered more evolved and therefore more intelligent, more reasonable, more imaginative, more superior to women. As such, it is not just female animals who have been ignored but also female scientists whose thoughts have been either curtained or curtailed. Cooke also mentions multiple examples where evidence from research has suffered through a confirmation bias, simply because it didn’t match the prevailing idea of male superiority. One example even mentions a male scientist’s declaration of a female bird having “hormonal imbalance” due to the breeding season and hence her behaviour being invalidated. Let me make it clear that she doesn’t point fingers at these male scientists but just shows how rational thinking has been coloured by gendered viewpoints. As she says, “There is no conspiracy here, just blinkered science. […] good scientists can suffer bad biases.”

The audiobook, clocking at almost 12 hours, is narrated by the author herself. And what an amazing experience it has been to hear her! She has put her experience as a BBC presenter to brilliant use and delivers a pitch-perfect performance. I loved the book for its content, but Cooke’s vivacity enhances the experience of the audio version. For the first time in ages, I relished an audiobook at 1x speed, soaking in every word and laughing/sighing along the way.

4.75 stars.

Tons of thanks to Hachette Audio and NetGalley for the ALC of “Bitch: On the Female of the Species”! I usually avoid nonfiction ARCs as I find myself handicapped in reviewing them. But this was one title that appealed to me the minute I saw that bad-ass hyena on the cover and I knew I HAD to read this. Never have I kept my fingers and toes so tightly crossed for any ARC! Hachette’s approval of this title had made my day, and reading this book has made my reading year.

This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.



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[Left Coast Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early naturalists were blindsided by the opossum's penis, which has the unlikely appearance of a fleshy two-pronged fork...Had anyone bothered to look inside a female opossum they would have discovered an equally bizarre bifurcated system involving two ovaries, two uteri, two cervixes and two vaginas. What makes this embarrassment of riches even more extravagant is the arrival of a temporary third vagina which emerges for the sole purpose of giving birth and disappears shortly afterwards.

* * * * *

In many duck species lone males band together to ambush and force themselves, en masse, on defenseless females....Amongst mallards 40 percent of copulations are forced...Brennan knew from previous studies that although over one third of of duck matings are forced, only two to five percent of ducklings arise from these invasive copulations....Brennan had a hunch that the female's helical piping, with its opposing spirals and strange cul-de-sacs, might have evolved to thwart fertilization from hostile drakes by obstructing the path of the penis -- a homegrown cock-blocker.

I learned a lot from this book, which is Test #1 for nonfiction, and scientific nonfiction in particular. Much of this was fascinating. At the same time, wow, this was a frustrating read, and I had to struggle to finally award it four stars. It could have been much better and more focused.

The hard-core science kid in me found plenty of great stuff here. One of the fun things about biology is its enormous diversity, and some of the challenges this poses to Darwin's Theory (and FFS, let's just call it a law and be done with it -- it's every bit as solid as the laws of thermodynamics.) Not because the law is wrong, but there are some odd characteristics out there whose evolutionary history is unclear. This book tackles a number of these in a satisfactory way.


Take, for example, menopause, to which author Cooke devoted an entire chapter. Until reading this, I was unaware that only five mammal species are known to exhibit this -- the other four are whales that hunt in packs. Interesting! What's the connection?

Fact #1: Hunter-whale societies are made up of pods, and occasionally these pods meet up and form new mating pairs. After mating, the couples split up and remain with their original pods.
Fact #2: Females of these species are smarter than males, and have better memories
Fact #3: Whales' food supplies are scarce and highly mobile, and the ocean is vast and notably short of navigational aids.
Fact #4: Pregnant and nursing females eat up to 40% more than males, despite the males' bigger size.

Putting this all together and squeezing it through Darwin's Juicer, the following picture emerges: A female whale is born. Her father is in another pod, far, far away. Once the young female matures and becomes pregnant, she eats "more than her fair share" (excuse the anthropomorphizing) and thus may come into conflict with her mother, who probably also has a youngster to feed. The simple picture is eventually this competition becomes unhealthy and, at some point, it makes more sense for the older female to stop producing youngsters and instead use her superior brain and experience to assist the pod as a whole, including what are now several kids and grandkids. The explanation in the book was more technical, and I won't relay it all here, but I eat this sort of information up. But then, having established the "wise grandma" explanation, she tries to reinforce it by talking about elder female elephants. Which do not, in fact, experience menopause, which makes their inclusion in this chapter a little confusing. And somehow, amid all that, the way that humans fit into the picture was dropped, which is frustrating.

The problem is that the author has a second thesis, which is a little difficult to put my finger on, but to put it objectively, she seems to be saying that men have screwed up science, made things difficult for women in general and women scientists in particular, and with any luck will be replaced eventually by asexual reproduction. All of these points, save the last, are blindingly obvious and rather like shooting fish in a barrel. We actually find the author cheering springtails (a tiny insect) because they have managed to combine asexual reproduction with some degree of genetic variation, and thus hold out the promise of removing the "dead weight" (the author's phrase) of males from the gene pool.

And did you catch the bit about male whales being dumber than females? Take that, patriarchs!

I'd be happy to read a book about bias in science, and how scientists have failed to use bias elimination and statistics properly and have missed out on a great deal of interesting science as a consequence. And yes, in many of these cases the biases were ridiculously pro-male. I wish she had disentangled these two worthwhile topics and made two separate books of them -- they didn't mix very well here, in my view.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere along the way—likely from Inferior , but I can’t remember—I learned that women are excluded from most clinical trials for medication because our hormonal cycles are considered “too complicated” and they might throw off the trial results. Consequently, most of the medicines that make it to market have only truly been tested on men. Then there are inevitably—you guessed it—complications in some women who take these drugs, except doctors are just as likely to blame the issue on—you guessed it—hormones. Or it’s all in our head.

Gosh, sexism sucks.

Lucy Cooke examines exactly this kind of bias in science and medicine, but she does so with a particular eye on evolutionary biology. Bitch: On the Female of the Species is a tour through some of the weirder corners of the animal kingdom and species that defy our stereotypical understanding of the differences between the “two” sexes. It is also a polemic against bias in evolutionary biology and science as a whole, a bias against studying the female sex, which has resulted in gaps in vital knowledge. Cooke rightly points out that when we allow our human biases to influence our methodology, we short-circuit the scientific method—and all of humanity loses out.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Basic Books for the review eARC!

I read a lot of popular science books, and often—especially when written by a scientist—they can be ponderous and dull, at least in parts. Not so with Bitch, which is a riotous romp from the beginning. The first chapter, “The Anarchy of Sex,” lists off examples of ways in which females of various species break our idea of sex stereotypes and the binary. In particular, I found myself picking my jaw up off the floor as I read about the female spotted hyena’s testerone levels and her eight-inch clitoris and fused-together labia! By the time I got to the third chapter, “The Monogamy Myth,” I was calling my friend to read her a passage about the libidinous activities of female Barbary macaques—“once every seventeen minutes”??—and laugh in astonishment—the things they don’t teach you in high-school biology, hmm?

Where does this so-called wisdom come from anyway? That’s another question Cooke sets out to answer. She not only debunks sex myths but actively draws a line through research, from the writings of Darwin all the way up to the modern day—1990s and early 2000s—when some female scientists were still having their papers turned away from journals for being too “political.” This is, of course, the cardinal sin of the dominant group: conflating one’s own perspective (in this case, that of the cis, white, male scientist) with objectivity and neutrality. When a scientist announces findings that confirm our biases about males being stronger, more active, more promiscuous, then the world rejoices. When a scientist announces findings that confirm the same facts for females, then it’s “political” because it goes against the received wisdom. This confirmation bias, along with measurement, selection, and sampling biases, results in a lot of holes in our science. Cooke stresses the importance of reproducibility of results and long-term studies that, instead of anthropomorphizing the subjects or looking for certain expected traits, observe what the subjects do and record those observations without leaning on established stereotypes. If we look at a female animal and expect to see maternal behaviour, we will likely find it, and discount any behaviour that might not contribute to that narrative. Instead, we should just look at the behaviour, record it, and then we can sift through the data to see what we have found.

Bitch and books like it are important for laypeople to read because we are taught, growing up, that science is objective, impartial, unassailable. This is the hill that transphobic people are often willing to die on. Whether it’s the inclusion of trans women in sport or the very existence of trans people, transphobes (TERFs or GCs or whatever they want to be called these days) are quick to cry “but biology!” as if this is the ultimate argument against my existence when I am … you know … here. Existing. Lol.

When we make this mistake, when we assume that just because something is written in a book, published in a peer-reviewed study, repeated at conferences and in sound bites on the news, that it is the unassailable truth, we do ourselves a disservice as critical thinkers. This is particularly the case when the narrative being presented is simplistic and binary. As Cooke works so hard to elucidate here, nature is seldom either of those things—so when someone announces that it is so, we should be skeptical. Note that this is different from science deniers, who also profess skepticism—for theirs is, similar to the scientists whose bias is taken apart in this book, a form of confirmation bias rooted in conspiracy theories that ultimately advocate the abandonment of the scientific method. Cooke is not doing that here. She is not saying we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater—but it is probably time to change out that bathwater, and maybe get a bigger tub. The baby might be all grown up now.

Incidentally, as a trans woman, I certainly went into this book with a small amount of trepidation. Any scientific book that discusses the sexes can be, even inadvertently, trans-exclusionary. So I was reassured when, even before the introduction, Cooke includes an “Author’s Note on Language” that asserts, “This book intends to demonstrate that sex is wildly variable and that gendered ideas based on assumptions of binary sex are nonsense.” Fuck yeah. As I already commented above, the first chapter then being about “The Anarchy of Sex” cemented my sense that I was going to be safe reading this book. If that were not enough, Chapter 11 is called “Beyond the Binary” and features the work of trans ecologist Dr. Joan Roughgarden! This is important—there is also a common trend among people who want to be allies to shrug and say, “Hey, trans women are women and valid and whatnot, but eh, the data is just for cis men and women. So we know you exist, we know non-binary people are out there, but for our purposes we’ll just have to ignore you for the next two-hundred pages. So sorry.” That’s not acceptable. Trans people are here. We are in the fields being spoken about. So Cooke not only professes her allyship but actively includes trans people in her writing and actively makes sure that her approach to analysis is trans-inclusive rather than agnostic. That is true allyship. (I’m applauding right now.)

Ultimately, Bitch is, as the introduction says, about “a sexist mythology [that] has been baked into biology” and how “it distorts the way we perceive female animals.” Cooke comes with proof to back up this thesis, and most importantly (from my perspective as a curious reader), she presents this proof in an engaging, often hilarious way. Honestly, this book was the next best thing to watching a nature documentary, and probably slightly more informative given that it isn’t limited by time slots. It is worth your time and energy: not only will it entertain, but it is going to help you on your way to breaking down the gender and sex binary we are immersed in, along with the stereotypes that, for too long, too many people have propped up with faulty science.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bitch
On the Female of the Species
by Lucy Cooke
This book was absolutely amazing! It's going in my favorite folder for sure! I read it twice! It has factual information about various aspects of the female species that make them unique, in so many different species! Some aspects are so bizarre it's hard to believe!
Besides the rare and unusual tidbits of info that is explained and shocking the reader, sometimes it's the subject itself that's shocking! Wow, the subject! Lol! Yes, this book will blow you away!
The facts and information is also presented in a humorous, witty, and clever way that kept me smiling and chuckling! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Subject, humor, facts, and writer! All wonderful!

[Mansoor · Rating 1 out of 5]

معمولا مذهبی‌ها را به ضدیت با تکامل می‌شناسند. واقعیت امر این‌که بزرگ‌ترین و خطرناک‌ترین منکران تکامل فمینیست‌ها و مقلدان ایدئولوژی جنسیتند


به این مورد که تازگی در روزنامه‌ی تلگراف بریتانیا گزارش شده توجه کنید: زنی که سابقا قربانی تعرض جنسی بوده برای انجام یک عمل جراحی به بیمارستانی خصوصی در لندن مراجعه می‌کند. در اثنای انجام آزمایش‌های پیش از عمل، زن متوجه می‌شود که یکی از اعضای تیم پرستاری فرد مذکر ترنسی با کلاه‌گیس بلوند و صورت آرایش‌کرده است. حضور این فرد زن را معذب می‌کند. در نتیجه از بیمارستان درخواست یک تیم پرستاریِ تماما مونث می‌کند. مسئولان بیمارستان در جواب می‌گویند با عقاید زن موافق نیستند و چون او یکی از اعضای تیم پرستاری را آزرده، بیمارستان عمل جراحی‌اش را لغو می‌کند
حالا این مورد را بخوانید که در روزنامه‌ی وال استریت ژورنال امریکا گزارش شده: یک زندانی مذکر و مسلمان به خاطر عقاید مذهبی‌اش حاضر نمی‌شود برای بازرسی بدنی در مقابل مامور ترنسی که جنسیت مونث داشته برهنه شود و درخواست می‌کند از این کار معافش کنند. دادگاه فدرال در حکمی به او معافیت می‌دهد

در دنیایی که جنسیت بیولوژیکی انکار می‌شود، حقوق جنسیت‌محور ناگزیر پایمال خواهد شد. در چنین بلبشویی هویت جنسی خودخوانده‌ی افراد است که فرمان می‌راند. اما همان‌طور که از مقایسه‌ی دو مورد بالا روشن می‌شود، این رویه‌ی جدید برای گروه‌هایی که در سلسله‌مراتب اجتماعی سهمیه و امتیاز ویژه دارند می‌تواند به تعلیق درآید


دهه‌ها انکار تفاوت‌های جنسیتی از جانب نظریه‌پردازان فمینیست راه را برای تسلط ایدئولوژی ترنس هموار کرد. الان کار به جایی رسیده که مذکرهایی با هویت ترنس برای مونث‌ها تعیین تکلیف می‌کنند و مرزهای زن‌بودن را برایشان مشخص می‌کنند. این وسط زنان هستند که بیشترین لطمه را می‌بینند و حقوق جنسیت‌محورشان مورد تجاوز قرار می‌گیرد، و الا آن فرد مسلمان بالاخره با یافتن تبصره‌ای از خودش محافظت می‌کند

پی‌نوشت: اگر مارشال مک‌لوهان، نظریه‌پرداز بزرگ رسانه‌ها، زنده می‌بود، ابدا از وضعیت امروز ما تعجب نمی‌کرد. او به ما هشدار داده بود

پی‌نوشت 2: لوییز پری، از فمینیست‌های نسل جدید بریتانیا، در این مقاله‌ توضیح می‌دهد که چرا موج بعدی فمینیسم ماهیتی محافظه‌کارانه دارد. او تغییر بزرگی در عقیده‌ی عمومی مشاهده می‌کند و مادرانی را می‌بیند که سرسختانه می‌کوشند تا از فرزندانشان در برابر مقاصد موذیانه‌ی ایدئولوگ‌های جنسیت حفاظت کنند

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book caught my eye some time ago, not only due to the edgy title, but but also due to the premise. I enjoyed learning about females within the animal kingdom, their behaviour, how they mate and how they care for their young. I liked how this book boldly solidified the myth that males are superior to females, and I noted that the misogynistic approach in which we learn about evolution within the animal kingdom, has limited how we see ourselves. It's a vicious circle, and it's also rather disappointing.

I appreciate how Cooke focuses entirely on females animals and insects, for that reason it was a refreshingly unique read, and I learned more than I had anticipated. It did, however, have it's flaws, and one that stood out like a sore thumb, but was thankfully nearing the end of the book, was the fact that apparently scientists claim that animals don't have gender identity. I was surprised to read this in here, especially since it's basically pushing human beliefs on to animals. We shouldn't ever try to redefine various concepts purely so it slots in to whatever the present idealogy is.

Overall though, this was fascinating, Cooke writes well, and I've left knowing about how and when ten species of spiders have sex.

[Lydia Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy Cooke I really enjoyed this book. As soon as I read it I ordered some copies for my daughters in college. It is full of researched information and is written in such a fun way. Female and men should read it. After you read this book females should feel how great they are and always will be and you will look at the world in a different way. Highly recommend.

[Lydia Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really hope they made this book into a documentary like Planet Earth. Well researched and referenced. I kept having moments of awe and surprise of how species have evolved. Highly recommend.

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It’s a perfect blend of fascinating biology and satisfies the animal nerd in me while having the much needed discussion about female representation not only in the STEM world but also in general studies of all species. Cooke deep dives into the vast diversity of females across the spectrum and how gender roles are used or at times not necessary at all. There is so much in biology that still focuses on the males of the species while the female is overlooked and it turns out, they’re often times way cooler. Not only in terms of reproduction but also in animal culture and family units. I learned so much (more than I ever thought I would about genitalia) and I was still hungry for more stories of Cooke’s research into the female of the species. I love that the conversation is finally starting to be had about changing history from the misogynistic viewpoint that we’ve had to depend on to a more inclusive view. I can’t wait to see what else is discovered now that we have a the discussion started about gender roles within our own species, let alone how much other species are further along. Moral of the story: who needs men?

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi so I don't care if people think feminists have an "agenda" when they write books like this. If you believe in equal rights and equity between and among the sexes (assigned at birth or otherwise), then you need to start interrogating why a book that aims to turn stuff we already know (and have taken for granted) around and showcase a new truth about it triggers you. It shouldn't. It's ok, (actually, it's 100% EXPECTED) for new discoveries and truths in science to contradict the old ones. If you don't get that, you don't get how science works.

So yeah, this book has an "agenda." The agenda is to show us how the natural world is different from what we have previously believed. And it does this in an often hilarious way, which is still backed by peer-reviewed scientific studies, which the author presents to us accessibly. I loved it. I especially loved listening to it, because you can hear Lucy Cooke's personality as she reads it to you (which she does very Britishly). I do probably need to read the text at some point or listen to this again, because it was hard to retain all of the information, but I learned a lot. Did you know that the theory about female passivity is flawed? Like, horrifically, erroneously flawed? And it came about due to social bias informing scientific data? I didn't. But I do now. And it makes me very happy. The implications from some of the information in this book are staggering.

Highly recommend this book if you want to learn something in an engaging way!

[Tanja Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not once, prior to reading this book did I think the science fields were sexist. This is staggering, since I very well knew that women until recently have been few in STEM. So of course the perspective of biology, zoology and related fields have had a very firm male gaze and perspective. This book reveals new fields I f study into what is truly the female of the species and that she is rarely timid and passive. For example, many female songbirds cheat on the partner that help raise the chicks. Her quiet chirping that hasn’t gotten much attention can lure a suitor who is not her mate. Many physical attributes of the male have come about not because they enhance the chance of winning over other males, but from female choice. Just look at the peacock’s tail!

It’s not always clear cut what is male and what is female. In some cases it can be very complicated. Some species can even change their sex based on environmental influences and needs.

This is an informative and fun book. Even though some of the territory was familiar, it definitely brought perspective. Definitely recommended!

[Elentarri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucy Cooke can write interesting and informative popular science stories about various strange and unusual (and sometimes not so unusual) aspects of the female animal. Unfortunately, she mars this book by the overly heavy-handed insertion of her agenda - it became repetitive and thus exceptionally tedious. There were also no diagrams, illustrations or photographs, which is rather disappointing in a book covering the marvels and oddities of specific animals. So, this book is something of a mixed bag.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some aspects of this book I absolutely loved. Overall, the science writing is excellent, with everything well explained. Lucy Cooke puts her journey into the story, giving me more of her perspective. She writes with a great sense of humor and some very clever wording. The footnotes are definitely worth reading. On the less favorable side, some of the sarcasm in her writing doesn’t really work for me. I also found that the beginning and end of the book didn’t really match the rest of the content, which threw me off. Nonetheless, this book is definitely worth reading and is an excellent example of good science writing. Thank you to Netgalley and Basic Books for the advance reader copy.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started really strong, with a swift, on-point, take down of Richard Dawkins, but I got less invested as we went on.
Cooke gives us a tour (heh) of diverse species with highly varied female behaviours - focusing on female aggression, fertility control (vaginas that shut!) , same-sex sex and parenting, and female social dominance. She also brings in the work of leading scientists, including Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Jeanne Altmann, Patricia Gowaty and Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and gives long-overdue prominence to the hard yards these scientists have done to change perceptions of sexual roles in nature.
The book is an excellent overview of this work, and hopefully will go some way to changing popular perceptions of sexual dimorphism in the same way that science has shifted.
In the introduction, Cooke warns us that there will be anthropomorphising, and indeed there is. Quite a lot really. And as the book wound on, I found myself clarifying what it is about this style of science reporting that irritates me. Partly, it is the use of an entire species to somehow indicate diversity within human populations. Yet the book barely explores diversity within the bird or animal populations it studies, and when it does, describes this diversity in often reductionist terms around survival. Albatrosses, for example, form female-female pairs because it improves survival odds over single parenting. This may well be true, but it strikes me as telling us nothing about human genders.
Cooke is an adherent to a very strict view of sexual selection, where traits are defined by individual competition for mates. She does not look much at all at sexual traits that might form as part of cooperation, or natural selection drivers towards population diversity in sex roles. She does interview Joan Roughgarden, who is a controversial scientist working in this space, but is dismissive with little explanation of her contribution. Hrdy's theories, of course, are about cooperation as an evolutionary driver, advancing the survival odds of family groupings (and hence gene pools), but this - or the attendant population diversity that might be a result - is not well discussed. And without that, I suspect this book leaves an idea again that we are far more driven to conformity by our genes than any modern evolutionary biology would actually suggest.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

After loving Cooke’s The Unexpected Truth about Animals, I was eager to red Bitch and for the most part, it was a good read. As before, the book contains an immense amount of information reported with a lot of humour.

Even though much of the information concerns biology facts well known since long ago (e.g. some fish and amphibian species can change sex, some reptiles reproduce through parthenogenesis, i.e., females produce offspring without the genetic contribution of males, etc.), Cooke’s writing makes reading about it again into a pleasure.

The generalisation of Darwin's idea that females are the passive weak sex and males the active, dominant one driving evolution is still prevalent in non-scientific circles. This sexist bias resulted from the Victorian environment where the nevertheless brilliant theory of evolution was born. In a field mostly inaccessible to women in past centuries, social prejudice remained well into modern times.

So the many examples described in a very engaging and often fun way illustrating how the mechanics driving evolution are a tangled mix of natural, sexual and social selection are very welcome. And it is never too much reminding that in addition to male-male competition and female choice, it is clear that female-female competition over mates and resources, male choice, strategic female cooperation with both sexes, and sexually antagonistic co-evolution all have the power to shape mating success.

All this being said, I was frankly annoyed with parts of the book (especially the last two chapters) where Cooke seems to fall prey to the very same problem she denounces, i.e., being captured by the ideology of the day instead of sticking to the scientific method. I found myself rolling my eyes at each new mention of “patriarchy”, “white men”, “diversity” and “representation” to name a few. Bias lurks in language too - to use Cooke’s own words.

Overall, this is a fun, entertaining and thought-provoking read that reminds us of how amazing nature is and how little we still know about it. However, take it with a grain of salt, particularly the last two chapters and remember that humans are not amphibians, reptiles or fish. Dispensing with the many myths we've taken as truths for decades is a good thing, replacing them with new ones would be equally wrong or even worse, since we’re supposed to learn from past errors.

[Peter Tillman]

Science magazine's review: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...
(scroll down)
Excerpt:
"Did you know that all female mammals have a clitoris? Or that there is no such thing as a “maternal” instinct? Or that the only nonhuman animals known to go through menopause are the toothed whales, such as orcas? In addition to containing salacious conversation starters, Lucy Cooke’s new book, Bitch: On the Female of the Species, aims to confront the male-focused assumptions that have long gone unquestioned in evolutionary biology."

Lots more published reviews here, https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/bit...
Can't resist this one, an excerpt from the Guardian's review: "Offering a wealth of examples ranging from cannibal spiders to sex-switching reef fish, Cooke dismantles a mass of misconceptions about binary sex roles, many of which can be traced back to that beloved bearded icon, Charles Darwin ... Cooke gleefully rebuts many of these assumptions about male dominance and female docility ..so full of marvellous surprises about sex roles that I sensed Cooke herself was transformed in its writing." Woot!

Off to a good start -- but my library copy has already been called back (new book), so I'll have to put it on reserve again!
It did renew, but now it's due again. It's been a start-&-stop read for me, & I'm not sure why it's been so slow going. I do have notes, so might resume again at a later date. For now: book is seriously overdue. On indefinite hiatus.

5/26/23 addendum: overdue again. For whatever reason, this one just hasn't held my attention. I give up. Left unrated, since maybe it's just me. But I'm done. DNF.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting look at how sexism exists in the field of zoology, and why allowing sexist views to permeate science harms all of us and provides really wrong insights into how things actually work.

I learned a lot, and I had a lot of fun reading it, minus the parts of some animals who give birth through the clitoris, which sounds really painful.

Basically, fuck Darwin for not standing his ground, and fuck his sister for her Victorian sensibilities and editing out the "unseemly" bits, and fuck that other comrade of Darwin for twisting his work.

This pairs really, really well with Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality.

[Tabitha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recieved as an E-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


This book was a true intellectual delight. I learned quite a bit about the females of the animal kingdom that I hadn't known and it was all presented with a wry wit and cheeky thumbing of the nose at the patriarchy. Going through scientific history, the myopic and misogynist lense of western culture, and introducing the trailblazers that have and are presenting the truth of life on this planet, Lucy Cooke has presented to the world a beautiful tome about life, sex and gender in all its myriad iterations and splendor. This book proves in more ways than one that bitches rule the world.

[Eilonwy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this.

Let's stop imagining that all females of all species are alike, and trying to interpret all female behaviors (and honestly, all male behaviors as well) through gendered straitjackets so we can tell people what "proper" feminine/masculine behavior is, and then make everyone feel like crap for not meeting it.

This book is very well researched, and parts of it are pretty funny, such as a story about field biologists trying to make up narratives about "aggressive" male jays and "passive" female jays when all the field action was occurring among the females! And this happens all the time, across species, because of the perniciousness of that aggressive/passive male/female dichotomy, which constantly blinds researchers and distracts them from genuine impartiality in what they're studying. Lucy Cooke describes female behavior across many species -- mammal, insect, fish, bird, reptile -- and finds that it varies across individuals, environments, and circumstances. Females lead, fight, hunt, kill, and screw around, and trying to pretend they don't is to ignore and deny what's going on all around the world all the time.

Highly recommended, whether you think you're interested in science, gender, or both, or not. It's very well-written and super entertaining.

[Eduardo Enríquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Cooke explores an explicitly feminist version of the science of evolution, centering on what for her are victorian or sexist biases inside such a field of study. It could really be less anecdotal, as it mostly reallies on cherry-picked examples and is much less willing to venture into a broad theoretical framework. The direct consequence of this fact is that much is implied by extension of the selected examples and much is ignored in what is not selected. For example, it is quite common for her to look for exceptions and special cases, without recognizing how much that work implies that there is actually statistical regularities that are contrary to what she is seeking. She isn't interested at all in steel-manning or trying to understand what for her is 'standard' (man-made) evolutionary theory.

Personally, I think it is an interesting read for those who already know evolutionary biology, who will be able to contrast the author's perspective with the legacy of this field of study past and present, and will also get to know interesting instances of sexual selection and evolutionary logic. Those seeking to go into evolution for the first time through this book will leave with an extremely biased picture.

[Anaïs Cahueñas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitch by zoologist Lucy Cooke is such a fun and bright nonfic that delves into the dynamic matriarchal ecosystems found in different species in nature. She rightfully points out the patriarchal bias that permeates history and science - How women are left out of clinical trials due to our “hormones”, biology has also historically been viewed through a male dominated lens. Nature, Cooke elucidates, defies the binaries that humankind have shackled themselves with.

I loved the biological lessons and learning the fluidity of gender in animals in a playful way. Gifted to me by my sister, who knew I’d eat this up, I was absolutely enthralled.

Bitch opens up the door to a less sexist mindset that has been baked into science, and immerses us in our weird and wonderful nature. Safe to say, the facts I learned in this book will become my new personality - I’ll be bombarding social events with facts about menopausal whales and the same sex relationships of albatross.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I published a version of this on my daily Substack.)

In 1952, zoologist Carl G. Harman declared that "Opossums copulate through the nose." Then the nasal babies are ejected from the snout to the pouch via a sneeze. Early naturalists came to this conclusion because the opossum's penis looks like a two-pronged fork and the only holes that obviously matched it on the female were the nostrils.

The truth could only be gleaned by looking inside the female to find two ovaries, two uteri, two cervices, and two vaginas. Not only that, but at the time of birth, a third vagina emerges for the birthing and then disappears once babies are out.

This is just one of a plethora of thrilling facts in zoologist Lucy Cooke's book Bitch: On the Female of the Species—written to confront cultural male bias in scientific study. There are so many great stories in this readable, humorous book—written like good journalism with thorough scientific knowledge—that I could quote from every page. But better to just say: Read this! It's wonderful.

The reason for the bias was because most of the researchers were men. One subject of a story about a researcher who studies vaginas blatantly quotes her admitting that she chose her area of focus because she has one and is interested in them.

Jump-cut to DEI
You cannot read this book without learning that in science, animals don't have gender, and sexual markers are all over the map. There are, by our terms, homosexual communities of animals; homosexual birds who "marry" for life; there are females with pudenda; and XX and XY chromosomes marking female and male biological sex don't even begin to apply to nature where the only rule is diversity. There are animals who switch sexes multiple times within their lives; there are animals that reproduce without sex . . . or with sex—they do both. Absolutely nothing in nature is binary; there is "the innate flexibility of sex roles in nature and the ability of animals to innovate their behavior to succeed in challenging new social and ecological environments.(247)" And so much of this was discovered by scientists who are not heterosexual white men. So you quickly realize that without all kinds of people being involved in every field, from warehouse workers to education, research, and politics, there is no way to best solve a multitude of problems and tell the truth because no homogeneous group will even think to ask questions outside of their own group.

If you understand that, you will quickly understand that what our government is doing by cutting DEI programs and diversity efforts, as well as staunching and eliminating rights for people who exhibit the same sexual diversity that is everywhere in nature, is completely sabotaging growth. All of our growth!

We have heard the urgent alarms about free speech and authoritarianism and we are just beginning to experience what it means to have nonscientists decide medical treatments. But the defunding of DEI in every program as well as the attack on LGBTQ+ people should raise our alarm level even further. The advent of these programs and this massive effort was an effort to evolve and survive—nature’s natural impulse.

This is not just about equal opportunity. It is about the evolution of our species, the health of our planet, and the future growth of every single one of us. We will not feel the full sabotage of this right away—until we begin dying en masse from preventable diseases, until our population’s innovations have stalled to a point where we may not recognize our once cutting-edge brilliance. But now is the time to recognize the danger and do something about it.

Diversity means survival. Lack of diversity means death. Anywhere in nature that you explore, that is the rule.

Read this book to understand how true this is.

[Ola G · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10 stars

My full review on my blog.

[...] Let's not beat about the bush: I initially chose this book on the strength of its title. And it's a cool title, no question about it. That hyena doesn't hurt, either ;). Lucy Cooke tackles a topic that has been avoided for years, decades and centuries. Most representatives of the biological sciences, on the account of being human and as such subjective and subject to the strictures of their cultures, tended to treat the females of other species as they treated their own: negligible and, in general, uninteresting. Weaker, drab, passive and condemned to live their lives as a background for the virile males, females were perceived as a secondary sex: important, sure, but never truly in power. Cooke, with the help of many contemporary scientists, proves these assumptions wrong.

Her writing style is anecdotal, humorous and easy to follow. Cooke describes her various journeys and encounters with diverse and fascinating species, and hands out snippets of hard knowledge with lightness and an endearing personal touch. Filled to the brim with strange, memorable facts and interesting descriptions, Bitch fits neatly into the mold of popular science books, but delivers more substance than most. It's highly enjoyable but also surprisingly educational: I've learned a lot, and my brain is full of fun facts about orcas' menopause or the authoritarian rule of praire dogs' matriarchs. Yet, as with all books aimed at challenging the status quo, this book is also highly political in the original sense of the word: it relates to the public interests and an such its message can become charged. Cooke is quite aware of that fact and wields it as a weapon: what applies to females of the many species she describes, applies also to women. Thus, Bitch turns into a feminist manifesto: humorous, self-aware and personal, but with a bite. I for one fully endorse its message of diversity and complexity as natural states of the world, states that should not be divided into simple dichotomies.

The one thing that bugged me about this book, particularly at the beginning, was the iconoclastic effort aimed at Charles Darwin. For a book bearing message of inclusivity, the Darwin hate was rather jarring, and unearned. I get it, apparently biological science faculties resemble Pratchett's Unseen University in more than one aspect, mainly in the staunch refusal to acknowledge reality, but also in idolizing the past and rejecting the passage of time, but that's not Darwin's fault. Had he known about the complexity of the relations between sexes in the animal world? Yep, and Cooke in the later chapters acknowledges as much. Had he not spread that message around in the Victorian times? Yep, and who can blame him? He had been burned enough by simply presenting his theory of evolution. Why would you go around throwing mud on Darwin simply because he didn't present all of his findings, or failed to put more emphasis on equality of sexes? It's rather the fault of his successors who conveniently picked and chose from Darwin's legacy whatever they pleased and justified their unobjectivity by stealing Darwin's authority. Cooke's deeply seated and understandable resentment toward the institutionalized prejudice bleeds onto Darwin himself, unjustly. It's anachronistic and, frankly, naive, to think of Darwin as this superhuman figure who could do anything in his time. He was ridiculed for publishing his less controversial findings, imagine what would happen in Victorian England if he published his writings about barnacle's penises and apparent female dominance.

Apart from that little quibble, however, this book was a truly fun and informative ride.

I have received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a weird arrogance in humanity that I've never understood. That some people are so confident in their knowledge. It's not even knowledge really, it's just... this weird sort of absolute blind belief that their version of the world, is the correct one. I've always been on the other end of the spectrum, I guess, I often feel crippled with doubt that the things I know, I'm not sure if I really truely know... you know?

And with that absolute word salad of a first paragraph we launch into my thoughts on Bitch, an absolute cracker of a book that really takes a moment to say "Do we really know?" and the answer is... not as much as we think we do. There's a very important thread of acknowledgement throughout this book, that is emphasised at the end. As people, especially in the case of science, we fail to acknowledge our own unconscious bias. We like to think that we are completely objective in all things without having the time to self reflect on how impossible that would truely be. And that is the crux of this book. That many theories of behaviour in animals and evolution, those made by Darwin and others, are coloured by their own ideas of society. Darwin's theories in particular, as this book points out, are rendered by set ideas of Victorian woman.

Undoing these assumptions that still permeate through scientific thought is the focus of many of the people that author Lucy Cooke spends her time with. Her writing is full of her own joy at spending time with these people and the animals they study, wonderfully witty and quick. I loved reading about the matriarchal Orca's that have post menopausal leaders, the sexual proclivities of lions and the long term same sex relationships of some albatross in Hawaii. Wasn't so fussed on reading about the sex lives of arachnids and I made the mistake of reading that chapter before sleep (NOT a good idea) but sometimes you take that uncomfortable reading with all the other fascinating stuff.

Challenge your assumptions. Crack this one open.

[Janine Colon-Vazquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. I heard about it on an interview in NPR and it sounded informative and witty. It's a well-written book and interesting but I was under the impression it was more social and historical commentary than a science book. It is heavily about animal behavior and specifically sexual behavior and their anatomy. For example there were twenty pages on different spiders that have sex and how and how often the female kills the male. There's small segments of commentary but I thought that would be the majority. This book is probably great for those more interested in the detailed science but for me it felt like it went into more detail than I was interested in and I wanted to know more about the societal views and historical moments. Probably more my fault for not understanding the full focus of this book and it was interesting and important nonetheless.

[em de · Rating 4 out of 5]

honestly, fat slay. this book was so needed. i’ll think about this book for a long time. every time i hear some fuck ass man in a bar tell me i’m not gay i just haven’t found the right dick yet (and it’s definitely his), i’ll feel no shame. queen lucy cooke reminds us that sex and gender are insanely varied across the animal kingdom and even fluid within a given species. lots of the time there is a very scientific and logical explanation for different sexual behaviours, and lots of sex is still not understood by scientists.

as a kid i went thru an ‘i wanna be a marine biologist’ / ‘i want to live in kenya and study giraffes’ phase and although i went a different route (which i love) it reignited a whisper of that curiosity and love of animals i had as a little creature myself.

we r all just creachers tryna do our best 🫶
now go read kafka metamorphosis 🫶

[KC · Rating 5 out of 5]

The female species has had its fair share of being viewed by evolutionary scientists, predominantly male, as being the weaker sex, the sex that science and research need not to examine or heavily fund. In this fascinating book by Lucy Cooke, she flips that sexist narrative upside down giving the “lesser sex” the upper hand, revealing how it’s the female species that is the driving force in reproduction and often times the dominate one within the circle. Filled with wit and humor, often revealing some of the most spellbinding science, Cooke has creatively written a book on biology & feminism; perfect for the 21st century. For those who enjoy books on Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, or Rosalind Franklin.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read 2025: I first read this three years ago and this time around I gave it a listen. Cooke narrates it herself, with as much enthusiasm as one would expect. My top three takeaways from a second go-round:
1. Be curious and aware of your own assumptions, otherwise you might spend centuries ignoring important information.
2. Everyone makes mistakes or misinterpretations, even Darwin.
3. What is possible in the natural world is far beyond most humans’ scope for imagination.
--------------------------------------
If I had lived my whole life being fed the information from this book, and seeing it reinforced in every other book, advertisement, church service, magazine, and classroom, and then had watched movies like Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel every weekend, I could understand how I might grow up insanely confident, feeling like I could take on the world and shape it to my will. It’s simultaneously intoxicating and wildly frustrating to know that this is how some men have experienced the world for centuries. Honestly, if this is how I feel after reading one book, it just makes me wonder what women could do if they were simply acknowledged.

We are missing so much with our narrow, human, man-centered view of the world.

Cooke manages to deliver a stunning array of information with an ample amount of humor. I laughed, I was amazed, I felt both anger and hope, I found myself sharing really cool facts with friends. I resisted sharing really cool facts with strangers, because not everyone wants to hear about animal testicles and vaginas out of a clear blue sky.

My biggest complaint is the cumbersome way Cooke chooses to cite her information, making the initial reading experience smoother, but at a high fact-checking cost. And there are a few places where she could have done a better job tackling the fact that humans are animals. But as far as a well-written book that had me both learning things and feeling things while both laughing and cringing, and sent me to the internet several times for diagrams or videos of what she was describing, this was probably the most intense and satisfying reading experience I’ve had this year.

Pair with Invisible Women to fully appreciate the disservice science does to us all when ignoring fully half the world.



NOTES:
From the introduction: “I was taught that this apparently trivial disparity in our sex cells laid cast-iron biological foundations for sexual inequality.” (From her tone, I’m assuming this will later be revealed as utter nonsense.)

More Introduction: “If womanhood is going to be defined by one thing, rather than strict, outdated rules and expectations, it is its dynamic and varied nature.” (The idea that “woman” or “female” cannot be boiled down to one behavior, physical identifier, or even a clear set of characteristics is clearly too much for many people even today.)

Chapter one begins by looking at females of animals that defy conventional human assumptions. For example, female spotted hyenas give birth through what is essentially a penis, or “her curious, multi-tasking clitoris.”

😳🤯

Chapter one continues into chromosomes and genetics, noting that XX vs XY is a laughably inadequate distinction, and “…the idea that evolution would produce such a tidy binary solution for sex proved to be woefully naive.” Platypuses have FIVE PAIRS of sex chromosomes. Forget XY, they have XXXXXYYYYY and by studying platypus chromosomes scientists came to the conclusion that the Y chromosome will eventually disappear. (That’s right. DISAPPEAR.)

The end of chapter one finishes up with a stunning revelation, namely that estrogen receptors are way (way) older than androgen receptors. So basically everyone is rooted in female sex steroids: “I can’t think of any tissue in the body that doesn’t have an estrogen receptor.” The point is hammered home by reinforcing that it wasn’t Adam and Eve after all… just Eve, all by her lonesome, for millions of years before Adam deigned to show up.

Chapter two addresses choice as a factor shaping the evolution of sexual behavior and traits. The idea that a female would choose something pretty, thus encouraging the continuation of outlandish finery like peacock tails doesn’t seem that alarming. But to those who think that a) God creates all beauty (female choices certainly do not), And b) that only educated and refined upper classes can appreciate beauty (not sad little bird women), this is too much to handle.

This author’s turn of phrase is something else. I am dying. This chapter may kill me.

Chapter three begins with the known truism that males have a biological imperative to be more sexual and have more partners. But then the author notes, if the men are all having wild sex, who are they having it with if the females are so coy and chaste and conservative. It continues with the fascinating information that 90% of female birds have sex with multiple partners, but certain members of the scientific community were so invested in female monogamy they refused to believe what was right before their eyes… until 1997. This section even addresses “toxic masculinity” in langur monkeys (namely, infanticide in order to force a female back into a sexually receptive state), and its counter (female promiscuity to confuse paternity and protect her child).

**And then Cooke continues by stating that the bigger an animal’s testicles, the more men the females are enjoying, which gives a whole new meaning to the admiration of the size of someone’s metaphorical balls. Once again, the bigger your balls, the more likely your lady is running around on you.**

The chapter then finishes all up with some lovely sexism in the sciences, including a male scientist accusing the female scientist of just looking for an excuse to be horny.

Chapter four begins with spider sex, an incredibly delicate and anti-Victorian endeavor. It’s a little Battle of the Sexes here.

And now a 50 Shades of Grey reference 😂 (because some spiders do bondage, a variation on oral sex, or other interesting strategies). Having a moment in this chapter where there are so many amazing things clearly happening in the world around us, and yet humans are ruining it. I am simultaneously awestruck and deeply distressed.

Chapter five takes a brief moment to reveal opossums’ tri-vaginal reproductive system before dropping the line that Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta supported eliminating stinkhorn mushrooms because they were too obscene. And this is the moment I go in search of a reference, only to find that Cooke (following a really horrible narrative nonfiction trend) has elected to forego precisely numbered references in favor of a really cumbersome endnote system. *eyeroll* And she included NO SOURCE for this anti-stinkhorn claim. *insert Moira Rose scream of first-world horror and frustration*

And then she gets into ostrich penises and duck vaginas. My main takeaways are that forced copulation between ducks does not frequently result in successful fertilization, and that the most successful birds have evolved past penises. Later in the chapter we get into dolphin vaginas (like ducks, they evolved to easily baffle an unwanted penis). Vaginal misdirection can be controlled by the dolphin themself: change the angle of their body and that sperm is going nowhere. Ducks, too, can choose to make vaginal access easier for a chosen mate, although neither ducks nor dolphins can stop an assault. In most of the book so far, humans don’t pop in too much. But we have gotten to a point in the narrative that’s a little too close to “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” It turns out that while this statement is false (in so many ways), there are nuances. If the goal is conception, female pleasure even in humans increases chances of successful fertilization. It’s easy to see how the willfully ignorant could twist that around to if a woman *isn’t* enjoying it, she *can’t* conceive (not true). In the end, female “control” as it’s referenced here sometimes is system control (the reproductive system in itself), and is sometime creature control, but the two are somewhat smushed together in ways I’m giving a bit of side-eye. And while the inclusion of human animals in this chapter is enlightening, I think she could have addressed the issue of rape in humans more comprehensively than the brief footnote she chose to include.

Chapter six addresses motherhood. So far, she is looking at whether females are biologically and neurologically adapted to be nurturers. The short answer is that, like so many things, this varies a lot across species and even between individuals within a species.

“In the mouse world, for example, virgin males are aggressive and infanticidal, regularly injuring or killing newborns.” But it is possible to turn off infanticide and turn on the ability to care. Besides the violent mouse incels, she also looks at the evolutionary role of infanticide and how studying that part of the brain could help with postpartum depression.

Knowing that Savannah baboon toddlers also have epic tantrums somehow makes me feel better. And even baboons have class privilege, handed down from mother to daughter. Why do we have such a hard time talking about privilege as humans?

On page 140 she addresses “strategic abortion,” noting that in the presence of incoming violent males who will kill her child anyway, some species have evolved so a female might make the choice to self abort her pregnancy. Honestly, this is hitting a little too close to home right now.

Holy hell, even bats and giraffes and black-and-white ruffed lemurs have community daycare for their babies. The fact that humans (at least in the U.S.) have not yet figured this out is beyond pathetic, and I blame Darwin and every lemming-brained man who went along with him. Humans literally evolved to be empathetic and cooperative and I look around and swear we are devolving. Destroying our home and creating ever more ways to brutalize each other and make others’ lives devastatingly cumbersome.

Chapter seven returns to the nature of female choice and the myth that men want sex all the time and must overcome female resistance to get it. Fighting female topi antelopes, singing female songbirds, chicken hierarchies, and the female-led meerkat Game of Thrones all make an appearance here. Hyper-fertile termite queens produce over 20,000 eggs per day, and naked mole rat Stalinist dynasties of more than 900 pups get discussed in this chapter. It’s brutal.

Beginning chapter 8 I am still being entertained and informed, but it’s discouraging to read how thoroughly the male-dominated narrative has seeped into every element of our culture, despite the readily available counter narratives. The descriptions of the female-dominated lemur groups (contrary to the character of King Julian in Madagascar) are both enlightening and just as cringey to behold as male controlled groups.

On page 191 she essentially rehashes Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, The Dangers of a Single Story, but from the perspective of using a small group of primates to tell the story of the entire human race. And then follows up with how the latest research suggests that primates’ common ancestors came from co-dominant or female-dominant heritage.

“Power in animal societies has traditionally been defined in terms of dominance through physical intimidation — which is a very male way of looking at it. …[w]e need to find a new way of categorizing power structures to recognize the commanding influence of females that are small yet mighty.“ Even focusing purely on dominance in a hierarchical structure, and not on the role of submission, ignores a large portion of the forces at work in any group.

“The social influence of these female(s)… was overlooked for decades, with researchers focused instead on the more dramatic politics of the alpha male and the noisy shenanigans of his dominance hierarchy.” As we are currently still distracted by the noisy shenanigans of a male-dominated political party, I’m not sure how far we’ve come.

Just spit out my coffee at the origin of the term “missionary position.”

Looking at bonobos and chimps to inform us about our human origins is wild. Chimps were found first and used to explain why men dominate and humans war against each other. But bonobos demonstrate that war does not have to be the default, we can choose sex instead. It’s a choice we are making for ourselves.

Killer Whales and menopause in Chapter Nine. To investigate, we search for data from whale poop. Bonus: Eba, the whale poop sniffing dog 😍

The chapter on whales reflects a lot on humans. Killer whales seem to have a greater emotional spectrum than we do, and are far more community-focused, tenderly caring for disabled members of their group. We as a species have had devastating effects on some of the killer whale populations, to the point where some groups will need to adapt or die. And the author takes a moment to turn that back on humans: our own choices are leading us down a self destructive path. Change must come before it is too late.

Chapter ten features same-sex albatross couples, whose cooperative breeding approach has enabled them to successfully mate in a new geographic area: “…these pioneering lesbians, forging new colonies on fresh higher ground, are literally preserving their species.” Again, human-driven climate change is affecting these species and these birds at least are trying to make it work.

Leaving the albatross, we visit mourning geckos (all-female lizards that reproduce via cloning, leaving them with no genetic variability), and aphids (a combo platter of explosive cloning for volume followed by sexual reproduction for variability).

“All female societies are twice as productive without the dead weight of males, whose offering of genetic diversity is now understood to be less crucial then previously assumed.“ 😐

And the next bit: THIS COULD BE GOOD NEWS for species endangered by humans’ irresponsible behaviors. It seems that human females are unlikely candidates for self-cloning, however. As the book has continued, the wonders Cooke describes in the animals kingdom are still astonishing, but she more directly acknowledges the threats these animals face, and the human causes.

The final chapter takes the sexual binary and throws it out the window, using Darwin’s private (as opposed to his public) writings. “Today barnacles, and creatures like them, are at the forefront of teaching us how sex is no static binary, but a fluid phenomenon, with fuzzy borders that can bend to evolution’s whim with astonishing speed.”

A more accurate Finding Nemo would have had Marlin transition to female. And it’s the delightful clownfish that makes the case that sex determine by gonads and sex determined by brain and behavior are not in fact always the same thing. “The time has come to ditch damaging, and frankly deluded, binary expectations because, in nature, the female experience exists on a genderless continuum: it is variable, highly plastic, and refuses to conform to archaic classifications.”