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Bitch Hardcover – March 3, 2022

by Lucy Cooke (Author)

4.7 562 ratings

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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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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (March 3, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0857524135
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0857524133
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.42 x 9.45 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,398,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #387 in Evolutionary Psychology (Books)

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4.7 562 ratings

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Lucy Cooke

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Lucy Cooke is a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning broadcaster, National Geographic explorer and TED talker with a Masters in zoology from New College Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins. Lucy has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times and Telegraph and is a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine. Her first book The Unexpected Truth About Animals was short-listed for the Royal Society prize and has been translated into 18 languages. Her latest Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution, and the Female Animal (also Bitch: On the Female of the Species in the US) was published in 2022 to critical acclaim. The UK launch was accompanied by a BBC Radio 4 series ‘Political Animals’, written and hosted by Lucy. Lucy has written, produced and presented prime time TV documentaries for BBC, PBS, Animal Planet and National Geographic. She is an accomplished public speaker and has performed at a range of events from the Royal Institution to Glastonbury music festival and the prestigious TED Women.

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4.7 out of 5

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Rich E.

Totally informative and a fun read. Nature is WILD!

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024

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I enjoyed this book so much that I ordered a copy for each of my twenty something Grand Daughters! It is chock full of researched information and Lucy Cook writes it all in such a fun and interesting way. Females should ALL know just exactly how GREAT we are- - and always have been!

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Em

Absolutely phenomenal

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2024

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This book is incredible whether you're a man or a female your knowledge of the biosphere and how we interact is greatly enhanced through this book. I couldn't adore Lucy more her writing is fun entertaining and incredibly informative. It's the type of book that makes you look at the world differently after reading it!

2 people found this helpful

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Sagedog

A fascinating, well-researched, and timely book, written with wit, compassion, and personal honesty.

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2022

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I love the author’s accounts of field visits to observe first hand what she was writing about. As a retired US Fish and Wildlife biologist with a long fascination with anthropology and primatology, and a life long interest in science, I found it compelling, hard to put down. Researched over the last 3 years and published this year, it’s a wonderful update on evolution and other fields I’d not kept up with for some years.

The crucial contribution of active female behavior to species’ success and persistence across all taxonomic levels was an eye-opener, and utterly fascinating. My academic and personal education began long enough ago that I remember and recognize the male biases in biology and anthropology that the author points out. Reading her book and thinking back, I wonder how I missed what she and other women scientists point out should have been the obvious questions. But I was young, male, and accepted at face value what male instructors and authors presented. She’s right: if men of science had been objective as scientists are supposed and claim to be, the role of women and females of other species might, possibly, be perceived quite differently at this point.

Focusing on sex, reproduction, and gender, the recent research highlights, more than anything I’ve read, the amazing plasticity of life to persist on the planet: there’s no one right way; what’s right is what works in a given era and environment, with a tendency to preserve long term processes that prove versatile and, well, plastic. Human cultural norms and expectations of sex, reproduction, and gender are not at all biologically realistic. In her Conclusion she writes: “We are all culturally conditioned to interpret the world within a framework of understanding that’s both deeply ingrained and highly personal. Stepping outside this safety net of certainty requires first recognizing it exists. Then being brave enough to admit you are out of your depth, but to keep on swimming forward regardless.”

I highly recommend the book.

11 people found this helpful

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K. Allen

Introspective much

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2022

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Perhaps Lucy has her issues, but I myself have never believed in Darwin's coy female idea because there is nothing coy about me. Tigresses aren't. Diversity is a truly marvelous thing and humans are just as highly variable as most other lifeforms. There are human chimera in this world so being all Biblical about sex/gender does a person no good at all. If nothing else, this book teaches that the interplay between hormones, genetics and society yelds marvels.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

This book was fascinating!

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2024

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I keep going back to re-read this book. There is so much information that is outside the typical male/female narrative, it is enlightening and entertaining. I recommend it to everyone I think is interested in zoology and the scientific process.

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2023

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I loved the scientific detail, with humor at times, of all the strange sexual configurations life has dreamed up. Really incredible. The work that scientists had to do to discover this information, is amazing. The primary reason the author wrote this book is to give stage to science, mostly women scientists, but men too, who are finding behavior and biology that either were unknown or challenges many previously established scientists understandings. Well done. I recommend.

2 people found this helpful

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Lyvon Watt

Nice book

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2024

Good price

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2024

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I loved this book so much. The author is so funny. Challenged many things I believed about the world. I tore through it. I think I’ll listen it it now on audio
-jenny

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Kleytone Alves Pereira

Excelente produto

Reviewed in Brazil on July 14, 2023

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O livro é no estilo de livros estadunidenses: uma capa preta com o título na lombada. Essa capa vermelha é só um pedaço de papel impresso cobrindo a capa de verdade. Nada que atrapalhe a experiência.
O conteúdo é fantástico e vale a leitura. Não preciso dizer que é tudo em inglês, né?

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Marianne

Belle qualité

Reviewed in Canada on October 8, 2022

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Couverture rigide, pages épaisses, belle qualité d'impression

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Mrs. V.

Amazing!!!

Reviewed in Germany on March 1, 2024

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This book made me laugh, learn so much and makes me love this wild and beautiful world even more! Thanks!!

J. Drew

A new look at gender in animals

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2023

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I began this book wondering if nature can tell us a better story than the myriad of confusion and arguments, we seem to be having in this world of ours around gender and sex – so can become any clearer with what’s going on in the rest of nature and does it lead to a greater understanding – or does it seem even more complex. “A sexist mythology has been baked into our biology and it distorts the way we perceive female animals. Yes there are doting mothers amongst them but then so is the jacana bird that abandons her eggs and leaves them to the haram of cuckold males to raise. Females can be faithful, but only 7% of the species are sexually monogamous, which leaves a lot of philandering females seeking sex with multiple partners. And not all animal societies are dominated by males by any means; alpha females have evolved across a variety of classes and their authority ranges from benevolent [bonobos] to brutal [bees]. There are female fatales such as cannibalistic female spiders that consume their lovers as post - or even pre-coital snacks and ‘lesbian’ lizards that have lost the need for males altogether and reproduce solely by cloning.”
- Victorian society only saw things from their own point of view, which was quite a paternal society. And yet scientists are now realising that the understanding of the past is not quite as it might seem. Females and males are in fact, far more alike than they are different and it can sometimes be hard to know where to draw the line.
- For too long many people have only studied the males of any species, seeing them as the dominant species and the one with the richest of life when compared to the female. However much of history and most of this research has been done by men who have often been slightly biassed in the subject matter. This book attempts to address the interesting and rich lives of the females of the species. And what a wonderful and colourful ride, with moments of humour mixed into all of this.
- There is an interesting chapter all about spiders of which sex for a male comes at the risk of becoming dinner for the female of the species. The male will continue and try to have sex both during and after they manage to have sex. However female spiders can be very devoted to their young and will often allow 300 babies to start sucking their innards, but eventually they can become a little bit too hungry and within two or three hours of eating they’ve eaten mum.
- The book looks at a range of factors that influence whether an animal will be male or female and sometimes is just down to genes. But sometimes gender can be changed due to the temperature in which a fish might have been laid in. This will determine whether it becomes male or female.
- There are some studies that show that male spiders often know that they are taking the risk of death in order to have sex and they can sometimes perform sex whilst doing a handstand though they may land on the female spiders fangs they can still manage to copulate and pass on their genes as they die.
- Another example cited in the book is how many male birds have lost their penis and it’s been now thought that female bird species preferred smaller and smaller penises until it got to the point that male birds lost their penis. There are still some birds who do have penises. And it’s also interesting that some female birds can have complicated vagina passages which can work in deciding whether to accept the copulated sperm from one bird from another male of the species. Many female animals can control the semen that comes into them and how they manage and select which male copulated semen they will accept.
- Lots of animals have a neural connection which inhibits them when they have just given birth to wanting to eat their own young and their own babies. The rest of the time the species might eat other eggs of other fish but something seems to kick in to stop them eating their own.
- 60% of mammals will eat young babies but something in the wiring of their brain switches off to stop them from once they’ve given birth to eating their own babies. Many animals appear to have parental instincts, and some even ensure that dad is part of the parental process but also ensure that they don’t keep their young.
- There is a long passage about the benefits of oxytocin and how this hormone makes birds and many other animals bond with a young but for some animals this can be disrupted. When oxytocin levels are brought back to normal as in a non-breeding baby mother, this can then result in the mum not having the same bond that they would have otherwise have, and this can cause harm and damage to their own babies. We do occasionally see this in humans and some mums can give harm to the young.
- Another interesting thing in this book is how, by observing some of the closest relatives in the animal kingdom, it is shown that humans have far more frequent young than say other great apes. “Human infants are born larger and more helpless than any of the other great apes and yet when you compare the birth intervals in modern human hunter gatherers with the birth intervals in any of the other great apes, you find that babies are weaned sooner and their mothers are breeding at a much faster pace than great apes. An orangutan mother gets no help and as a result can only afford to have a baby every seven to eight years. However, human hunter gatherers usually have children every two or three years. It's also worth noting that shared guardianship favoured offspring that were good at soliciting care, thereby promoting the evolution of our unique capacity for empathy, cooperation and understanding the minds of others.”
- Another story tells of an animals that I've always found quite nice to look at in zoos, meerkats, but when you look at their sexual behaviours of the groups and how they can be really quite cruel to one another, and also having to fight in live in the Kalahari desert, where there are beetles that spout acid from their anus and snakes, and they have to disarm these creatures before they can see them. Female meerkats live in a social hierarchy where one mum can be the leader and will be the only ones giving birth. Meerkats remind one of Stalin in their approach to totalitarian rule of one another, and especially the dominant female. Although they are in the Kalahari desert, which has extreme temperatures and animals seek and crave for food, so life is harsh. However, female meerkats are probably the most homicidal animal in the world, and that includes humans, and roughly one in every five will be killed by another meerkat.
- The giant mole rat which are hairless and blind, but who managed to have a soft skin that somehow means they can never have cancer and despite their size, can live for 30 years which is much longer than most other animals of a similar size. They are truly unique and full of wonder. “Naked mole rats are a true scientific wonder. The world’s only cold blooded mammal is apparently immune to cancer, capable of surviving 18 minutes without oxygen and feels no pain. These almost indestructible rodents can live for over 30 years which is eight times longer than would be expected for an animal of their size. Colonies are ruled by a single queen who does all the breeding with one of the three selected males. Four to five times a year she'll give birth to around a dozen pups although she can squeeze out many more - an eye watering 27 was recorded in one litter. And like a social queen she lives ten times longer than the workers of her colony, but with no age-related decline in her fertility, thereby allowing her to leave an extraordinary genetic legacy during her abnormally long reproductive life. 99.99% of the colony will never reproduce. The queen has put paid to any notion of parenthood by suppressing their sexual development.”Naked mole rats are a brilliant example of a sort of utopian, almost communist society, but of course lurking under that, there's all kinds of sinister things going on.”
- The book also looks at the range of animals that show either female submission or matriarchy and in most apes kingdoms, most are subservient but there is one notable exception, bonobos. Bonobos are very much led by the females of the species in organisation and hierarchy.
- The book also looks at how albatrosses who often bring up their young in what’s been described as a very monogamous lesbian relationship.
- Most geckos in the world are born of a small number of mothers showing that sometimes diversity through natural selection and sex isn’t always required in regards to having young.
- There are over 300 species of vertebrates that engage in homosexual behaviour or bisexual behaviour so it’s important to note that it is not just humans that have the potential to be gay. No matter how much this has been rewritten by biologists and religious ideologies in the past and histories full of this kind of misinformation.
- “The blue head wrasse are just one of many rainbow coloured fish that undergo a natural sex change during their adult life. Known as sequential hermaphrodite's these fish begin life as one sex and are triggered to switch camps by a social stimulus, such as the loss of a dominant individual or the relative availability of the opposite sex. For the flamboyant parrot fish, that change can be permanent and once they've made the switch their stuck with that sex until they die. And others have a more flexible sexuality that can switch back and forth throughout their life.” Some fish can change their sex as often as 20 times a day.
- Much of the information that we have acquired in the past about animal behaviour and gender and in particular to that of the female gender has been pretty much strewn with biases and misrepresentations. One example is it the way we breed female rats is very different to the way they behave in the world where they are aggressive and confrontational as male mice. However, when trapped in a cage their genders change in the form of behaviour that they present with as being more passive. They can often seem to switch between male to female and back-and-forth. Sometime this is to have some control of the reproduction and whether the sex of the baby face I will be male or female.
- I noticed that a lot of reviewers have commented on the woke agenda that Lucy Cook has given this book, but when you consider that, and these words are quite often cited in this book as well, most research has been male dominated and male orientated. why shouldn’t we have a little bit of levity and balance. What I really learned from this book is that you can't learn anything from animals because it's complicated, but it's a fascinating study and it's a really well told book. This book really opened my eyes wide to the diversity of females orientation and behaviour.
- In conclusion females are not destined to be passive and coy, evolutionary afterthoughts just waiting to be dominated by males. Even though they may be physically weaker, they can still be powerful. Strength can sometimes come through wisdom and age. Whatever we think we can learn from nature, the truth of the matter is that the female of the species is not so passive that we might think from the science that has been written in the past. This book is a wonderful, at times funny and awe-inspiring look at the female of the species.

6 people found this helpful

Juana Archer

A MUST read for anyone interested in the social sciences

Reviewed in Spain on November 27, 2022

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Written for the intellingent non-academic reader. Validation for those of us who have been uncomfortable with the sloppy, skewed "science" we were fed in school. It would have been nice if the author included some graphs and tables to back up/illustrate the statistics she cites throughout the text.

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Bitch Hardcover – March 3, 2022

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