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A review by starsal
Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn about Sex from Animals by Marlene Zuk
4.0
What I learned from this book is best summed up by this paragraph from its conclusion:
There is not a moral to every story in animal behavior. Sometimes a snake is just a snake, and sometimes snake sex is only about sex in snakes, or sex in egg-laying reptiles. Although a biologist’s job in part is to interpret what organisms do in a broader context, that context does not, and should not, need to include a lesson for human beings. This is true regardless of whether the lesson is something we would like to teach, which means that using animals as vehicles for nonsexist thinking is just as out of bounds as using them to keep women barefoot and pregnant.
It's a wonderful, readable book that I think everyone should read before we let them loose on all the animal behavior (especially sexual behavior) articles in the paper.
There is not a moral to every story in animal behavior. Sometimes a snake is just a snake, and sometimes snake sex is only about sex in snakes, or sex in egg-laying reptiles. Although a biologist’s job in part is to interpret what organisms do in a broader context, that context does not, and should not, need to include a lesson for human beings. This is true regardless of whether the lesson is something we would like to teach, which means that using animals as vehicles for nonsexist thinking is just as out of bounds as using them to keep women barefoot and pregnant.
It's a wonderful, readable book that I think everyone should read before we let them loose on all the animal behavior (especially sexual behavior) articles in the paper.