Bull

Lucy Cooke, New York Times–bestselling author of Bitch, explores what it really means to be male.

High on a Rwandan volcano, a silverback gorilla, the heavyweight champion of machismo, is happily babysitting a gaggle of infants, some of which aren’t even his. For decades, scientists mostly ignored this dedicated daycare. Science had a script for masculinity, and nannying wasn’t in it.

Ever since Darwin described the “law of battle,” scientists have viewed male animals through patriarchal goggles. But being male is more than just a ruthless reckoning of size and strength. In Bull, we meet the males the textbooks left out: queer vulture couples raising chicks, fish that politely queue for promotion, devoted wolf dads, mother’s-boy bonobos, kingdoms of bisexual dolphins, and chimpanzee leaders who win power by keeping the peace. Even T. rex, it turns out, was a cuck .

Witty, fearless and rigorous, Bull exposes the dangerous cultural afterlife of biased science: zombie studies that refuse to die, twisted by manosphere influencers into “rules ” for being a man. The real lesson from nature is far more surprising, and far more hopeful: there are many ways to be male, and masculinity is shaped by the world around it.

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Praise for Lucy Cooke's previous book, Bitch

'From the heir to Attenborough. 5*' - Telegraph

'Brilliant ... Cooke is a superb science writer' TLS

'Bitch is a blast. I read it, my jaw sagging in astonishment' Observer

'A bold and gripping takedown of the sexist mythology baked into biology' Guardian

'Colourful, committed and deeply informed.' Sunday Times

'Gloriously original' Daily Mirror

A 'sparkling attack on scientific sexism' Nature