A Little Queer Natural History
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Beautifully illustrated and scientifically informed, a celebration of the astonishing diversity of sexual behavior and biology found in nature.
From a pair of male swans raising young to splitgill mushrooms with over 23,000 mating types, sex in the natural world is wonderfully diverse. Josh L. Davis considers how, for many different organisms—animals, plants, and fungi included—sexual reproduction and sex determination rely on a surprisingly complex interaction among genes, hormones, environment, and chance. As Davis introduces us to fascinating biological concepts like parthenogenesis (virgin birth), monoecious plants (individuals with separate male and female flowers), and sex-reversed g******s, we see turtle hatchlings whose sex is determined by egg temperature; butterflies that embody male and female biological tissue in the same organism; and a tomato that can reproduce three different ways at the same time. Davis also reveals animal and plant behaviors in nature that researchers have historically covered up or explained away, like queer sex among Adélie penguins or bottlenose dolphins, and presents animal behaviors that challenge us to rethink our assumptions and prejudices. Featuring fabulous sex-fluid fishes and ant, wasp, and bee queens who can choose both how they want to have sex and the sex of their offspring, A Little Queer Natural History offers a larger lesson: that the diversity we see in our own species needs no justification and represents just a fraction of what exists in the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This splendid debut from Davis, a science writer for London's Natural History Museum, surveys the dazzling variety of sexual behavior and expression in the animal, fungi, and plant kingdoms. Scientists have obscured "queerness" in the natural world for centuries, Davis writes, recounting how, for instance, naval surgeon George Murray Levick's observations of sex between male Adélie penguins while Levick was on an Antarctic expedition in the 1910s were excised from his book about the trip at the request of his publisher, the Natural History Museum. Contending that sex categories are not as straightforward as often assumed, Davis notes that scientists estimate one in every 10,000 butterflies is "gynandromorphic," meaning that "one pair of wings are genetically male and the other genetically female." Elsewhere, Davis discusses unisex whiptail lizards that reproduce by "virgin birth," European yew trees that can grow "male" pollen-bearing branches and "female" seed-bearing branches on a single tree, and splitgill mushrooms that have "evolved more than 23,000 mating types." The fascinating science makes a resounding case that the natural world features more diverse expressions of sexual activity and biological sex than commonly believed. The result is a much needed corrective to blinkered notions of what's considered "natural." Photos.
