Hardcover, 400 pages
English language
Published June 14, 2022 by Basic Books.
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.
Lucy Cook has pended an wide ranging critique of the sexist myths that have led biologists to mischaracterize and ignore diversity of female animals. She covers a wide variety of creatures with fascinating behaviours and physiologies, forgrounding the researchers who study them.
