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 most macho of males, is happily babysitting a gaggle of infants, some of which aren’t even his. What to make of this free daycare service? For decades, scientists mostly ignored it. They 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, kingdoms of bisexual dolphins, devoted wolf dads, bonobo mama’s boys, 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 real harm that scientific myths of masculinity have caused, as manosphere influencers deploy zombie data to concoct poisonous “rules” for how to be 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.