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Bitch: On the Female of the Species
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"Cooke also places much-needed female faces to related studies, citing the work of Jeanne Altmann, Patricia Gowaty, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, and others."
"riveting research ..."
"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."
"A skilled journalist, Cooke has traveled the world to interview experts, most of them women, who have performed groundbreaking research and are unafraid to confront skeptical male colleagues ..."
"This hits the right balance between informative and entertaining; popular science fans will want to check it out."
"Cooke is willing to question the scientific validity of the evolutionary story as handed down by Darwin – a scientific sacred cow."
"I found my sense of humour failing ..."
"Her book encourages reflection but never overwhelms with information, even when, for instance, debunking accepted wisdom about XX and XY chromosomes ..."
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