Bitch: On the Female of the Species

Bitch: On The Female of the Species- Lucy Cooke

Basic Books/Hachette

Release Date: June 14, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: 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.

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I start this review with a confession: I absolutely picked up this book because of the cover. Hyenas are among my favorite animals (even more so after reading Bitch) and a cover featuring a hyena? I wanted to know what that book was about! Reading the synopsis I was a little concerned the science would go over my head, but I knew I had to read this book (or listen, as the case may be- I listened to the audiobook, excellently narrated by author Lucy Cooke herself). So kudos to the cover designers for drawing me in, but after that it was all Lucy. Along the way I started sharing bits with my co-workers and they came to expect updates after lunch breaks. I think I sold this book to all of my colleagues at the indie-bookstore where we work before the book came out based on "So I'm eating my sandwich and learning about . . ." One day this included a customer who was looking for a book to send to her daughter doing a semester abroad in England- her boyfriend had just dumped her for being too "feminist and empowered". I told her that was (unintentionally from his point of view, sadly) the best compliment to give someone and mentioned this book, and that it was probably already out in the UK. A fabulously well done mix of science facts both past and present and female empowerment, it seemed the perfect recommendation for a teenager who had been dumped for being "too feminist".

With that as a background, in case you can't tell, I loved this book and was fascinated from start to finish. Lucy Cooke, an author, National Geographic explorer, and award-winning documentary filmmaker with a master’s degree in zoology from Oxford University, has a brilliant writing style that is both irreverent, witty, and direct. Whether describing Charles Darwin's original evolutionary theory or her own experiences scooping orca poop (yes, that is a scientific thing) you feel as if Cooke is talking directly to you and sharing stories that might interest you. Or shock/enrage you as you come to understand that the "pure science" myth they teach in school is just that- a myth. Females have been sidelined from more than just conducting scientific research since Victorian times, Darwin and the Victorian patriarchy considered females the passive sex and focused their studies on the active, more interesting, males in the animal world. This has carried over far longer into the twentieth and twenty first centuries than I expected, often influencing studies by scientists who would ignore data to get the results they wanted, marginalizing and limiting the amount of research done on females (human health care isn't mentioned but I think we all would agree its an example that would fit here!).

Cooke takes us across the globe and around the animal kingdom, from my beloved hyenas to lesbian albatrosses; from the dark side of matriarchal meerkats they probably don't show on Discovery Channel documentaries to menopausal orcas; a wide variety of spiders and insects and why they eat their sexual partners; sexually promiscuous song birds who completely freaked out scientists; a wide range of matriarchal species defying stereotypical male domination; and "Evolution's Rainbow", perhaps the new theory in evolution as modern science evolves to accept a non-binary approach to nature, redefining what gender means and its place in the natural world.

Bitch: On the Female of the Species takes a humorous but thoroughly researched look at evolution and nature, and (I think) fairly successfully demolishes the stale and sexist myths of a male dominated animal kingdom once and for all. Cooke highlights research done by scientists of all genders to show that moving forward is a new world of thought, working hard to question everything the patriarchal establishment has entrenched as dogma over the centuries. Here, females have their day, their spotlight, as scientists try to learn more and show us what their lives are like, asking the reader to question what they think they know about the world around them, including what it means to be "female".

If you love animals, science, or want to learn about a new avenue of feminism, you absolutely need to read Bitch: On the Female of the Species.

  

I received a free ALC from Libro.fm in exchange for an honest review

Evolution's Captain

Evolution's Captain: The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the Beagle- Peter Nichols
HarperCollins
Release Date: June 29, 2004

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: One of the great ironies of history is that the famous journey—wherein Charles Darwin consolidated the earth-rattling ‘origin of the species’ discoveries—was conceived by another man: Robert FitzRoy. It was FitzRoy who chose Darwin for the journey—not because of Darwin’s scientific expertise, but because he seemed a suitable companion to help FitzRoy fight back the mental illness that had plagued his family for generations. Darwin did not give FitzRoy solace; indeed, the clash between the two men’s opposing views, together with the ramifications of Darwin’s revelations, provided FitzRoy with the final unendurable torment that forced him to end his own life.

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Evolution's Captain is a fascinating book following Robert Fitzroy, captain of the HMS Beagle and brilliant surveyor.  The book chronicles Fitzroy's two trips on the Beagle and his adventures surveying South America and Tierra del Fuego for the British admiralty.  Along the way Fitzroy becomes fascinated by the native Fuegians and ends up kidnapping three of them and bringing them back to England. His intention is typical of a man of his time: to educate the Fuegians in British manners, 'civilize' them as proper Englishmen (and one woman), convert them to Christianity and then return them to Tierra del Fuego to spread English Christian Civilization through the islands.  

As much as a modern reader cringes at the concept and thoughts expressed in many of the journals and diaries left by Fitzroy, Darwin, and others of the time period, there is no escaping that for a large part of the 1800s this was how England viewed the world and tried to change it in its image.  The trick for any historian is to try and explain to modern readers the culture of the time period- religious, political, and social- that led to this attitude and life approach.  In this Nichols does an excellent job.  The cultural background he explains makes for fascinating reading and helps us gain something of the perspective that Fitzroy was using during his exploits.  While you don't agree with him, at least you come to understand where he was coming from.  

The great temptation for a book like this would be to have all of the first expedition and Fitzroy's life leading up to Darwin's arrival on the Beagle for the second voyage be merely setting the stage for Darwin and allowing him to take over the rest of the book.  I liked that Nichols resists that temptation and makes Darwin another way for us to follow and understand Fitzroy instead of becoming the centerpiece himself. Darwin is also a symbol (or a symptom) of Fitzroy's thinking later in life.  The Victorian era was one of the greatest and fastest changing eras in terms of social and scientific thought until the creation of the internet.  Babbage's analytic machine, the steam engine, developments in geology and biology brought huge changes with them.  Fitzroy, originally something of an amateur scientist himself, becomes one of the reactionaries who take up the religious mania of the times and attempts to use literal readings of the Bible to argue against growing ideas of evolution and scientific change. The great irony of his life becomes his friendship with Darwin and his decision to bring Darwin on the second expedition as a companion, only to be haunted in later life by Darwin's ideas and the feeling that he was personally to blame for their development.  While Nichols ably proves that this was not the case, it haunted Fitzroy for the rest of his life.

My only complaint is one I often have with histories or biographies- Nichols tends to allow foreshadowing to creep into his writing (especially at the end of chapters). The common "if only they knew", "this would change everything" type of remarks always annoy me, although Nichols does it less than some biographies I've read.

A fascinating book, and a must read for people interested in Victorian England and its cultural/scientific/religious developments , sea exploration and adventure , and South America.