A Little Queer Natural History

by Josh L. Davis

Overview

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 genitals, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226836829
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	10/10/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	52 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Josh L. Davis is a science writer for the Natural History Museum, London, with a background in biology and conservation. His writing has been published in Mongabay, IFLScience, the Observer, the Guardian, and the Times.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Adélie penguin: Homosexual couples

Mangrove killifish: Reproducing with itself

Duck-billed dinosaur: Bias in names

New Mexico whiptail lizard: Parthenogenesis

Morpho butterfly: Divided down the middle

Western lowland gorilla: Queer behaviour in apes

Domestic sheep: Can animals be gay?

Saharan cypress: Androgenesis

Bicolour parrotfish: Sex-fluid fishes

Swans: Male couples as parents

Green sea turtle: Temperature-dependent sex determination

Giraffe: Homosexuality in the mainstream

Common ash: Sexual spectrum

Common cockchafer: Historical homosexuality

European yew: Sex change

European eel: Environment-dependent sex determination

White-throated sparrow: Beyond the binary

Spotted hyena: Female-led societies

Western gull: Lesbian mothers

Common bottlenose dolphin: Explaining the gay away

Common pill woodlouse: Bacteria-dependent sex determination

Bluegill sunfish: Do animals have gender?

Common pheasant: Out-sized influence

Splitgill mushroom: Thousands of sexes

Chinese shell ginger: Temporal sex

Cane toad: Intersex animals

Moss mites: Ancient asexuals

Dungowan bush tomato: Changeable sex

Barklice: Sex-reversed genitals

Index

Further reading

References

Picture credits

Editorial Reviews

“A very welcome slap on the wrist for those who so ignorantly claim that same-sex love, intimacy, and bonding are ‘unnatural.’ Davis’s splendid book is a most useful settler of arguments and silencer of bigots.”

— Stephen Fry

“Reveals that the natural world is more complex and inclusive than people often assume. . . . Gorgeous. . . . An absorbing and meticulous science text, A Little Queer Natural History shares an important perspective.”

— Foreword Reviews

“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. . . . 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.’”

— Publishers Weekly

"A beautifully illustrated book celebrating the 'non-heteronormative biology and behaviors that exist in the natural world.' Gorgeous photographs accompany stories of hermaphroditic fish, lesbian gulls, and male swan couples raising chicks as well as spotted hyenas in female-centric colonies. . . . Davis’s colorful encyclopedia takes on ‘scientific’ literature dating back to Aristotle, critiquing it for its biases and 'moral language' regarding the diversity of sexual expression. By looking so closely at the queering of the natural world, the author underlines and celebrates an expansive view of erotic behavior. Rooted in empiricism, with no anthropomorphizing or didacticism allowed, A Little Queer Natural History is a valuable counterweight against the homophobia bred by today’s culture wars."

— The Arts Fuse

"The book excels in showing the reader the complexity of nature, of reproductive systems, all the different ways genes can be packed into chromosomes, how the environment or other living beings can influence what crawls out of an egg.”

— 10,000 Birds

“Many people, including researchers and people who are simply interested in animal behavior, have written off queer sexual behavior in nonhuman animals for any number of reasons, including that it is offensive or so rare as to be meaningless. However, times are changing, and science writer Davis’s fascinating new book A Little Queer Natural History explains how queer animals and plants not only aren’t rare but are rather common, and studying their behavior more closely can open our eyes and hearts to the astonishing diversity of sexual behavior and biology found in nature.”

— Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today

"The book delves into the complexity of sexual reproduction and determination, including the influence of genes, hormones, environment, and chance. Examples include turtles with sex determined by egg incubation temperature and butterflies with male and female biological tissue. The author challenges readers to reconsider assumptions and prejudices by showcasing overlooked animal and plant behaviours in nature."

— Australian Wildlife

"Definitely a book for this current age. . . . A good, interesting, quick and quirky read."

— Western Australia Bird Notes

"Nature is a rainbow. This concise book (just 125 pages) offers an enjoyable and illuminating look at the diversity of the natural world and shows that Earth’s plants and animals (including us) are far from binary."

— The Revelator

"In his book, A Little Queer Natural History, science writer Davis gives a sampling of the enormous variety of gender and sexual behaviors in the plant, fungal and animal world and the ways some scientists have twisted themselves into knots to find non-sexual explanations for gay sex in animals. . . . Davis [talks] about the gender fluid, intersex, asexual, gay, gender changeable, multi-sexual, rainbow splendor of the natural world."

— KQED's Forum

"However you learned the facts of life, it changed you forever and in the new book, A Little Queer Natural History by Davis, there's more to the wild story. You are not alone. Just look around. . . .Davis stuffs each entry tight with real scientific information, and he uses actual scientific terms to do it. There's zero dumbing-down in that, but Davis is quick to explain terms and ideas, which helps readers to completely understand what's here. For sure, you'll feel like a smarty-pants as you make your way through this book. . . . A Little Queer Natural History is a smart book, perfect for quick reads at random at this busy time of year. If that's what you need now, enjoying it's a fact of life."

— Out South Florida

"A Little Queer Natural History by Josh L. Davis illustrates the tremendous variety of reproductive options and sexual behaviours of creatures as varied as yew trees, parrotfish, giraffes, green sea turtles, and bighorn sheep."

— EcoFriendly West

"Fascinating. . . . That homosexuality occurs in other mammals is the least of it; we are living in a universe of insane complexity. . . . One finishes this book no nearer to an 'explanation' for homosexuality, but one feels comforted and somewhat awestruck to know that we are not alone."

— Gay & Lesbian Review

"'There are only two sexes.' Really? Many species do have large and small sex cells (egg and sperm), but many other lives share this sphere. The Splitgill mushroom, of 150,000 fungal species known so far, has some 23,000 'mating types,' used since sexual fungi employ same-sized (isogamous) cells. It’s a headily diverse world. Mammalian sex is often determined by XX and XY (usually M & F) sex chromosomes; other species, arthropod roly-polys, by ZZ and ZW (M & F). But, roly-polys (pill woodlice) actually derive their sex from an infection by a Wolbachia bacterium. Admittedly outré, but habits of familiars; giraffes, swans, bluegills, hyenas, penguins and low-land gorillas may shock and surprise in this nifty compendium of what actually makes the world go ‘round."

— Lavender Magazine

"From penguins and turtle hatchlings to mushrooms and tomatoes, learn about diverse forms of sexuality and reproduction in the natural world. Davis, a science writer for the Natural History Museum in London, delves into complex plant and animal biology and behavior while sharing how queerness in nature has been diminished and hidden by scientists in the past. The full color photographs complement his research, and will enrapture any reader who's interested in the natural world around them."

— South Side Emerald

"A Little Queer Natural History is a great addition to the inclusive biology literature. Davis has produced a very readable book with photographs that bring into vibrant focus a parade of organisms living their beautiful lives without any regard for human social norms. Davis brings an approachable voice that includes familiar and colloquial terms that humans use to describe gender and sexual behavior, while striking a careful balance that doesn’t anthropomorphize. . . . The book can be relied on as a resource for anyone looking for examples of diversity across the biosphere, and as an excellent reference whenever the need arises to shut down anti-LGBTQ bias that relies on pseudoscientific misinformation about the natural world." 

— American Biology Teacher

"My people, nature is extremely queer. It is very, very queer. I cannot overstate how queer it is. I recently immersed myself in a book that revels in just how deliciously queer nature is, and it was exactly what I needed. Maybe it’s what you need, too. This is a very short book; you can easily read it in an afternoon. It’s accessible and engaging—more of a Queer Nature 101 than an in-depth lecture. It includes a series of profiles on various plants, animals, and fungi, as well as the astonishing array of sexual, biological, reproductive, and behavioral diversity they display. From trees and flowers to frogs and fish, from giraffes and gorillas to common birds and elusive eels, the natural world is overflowing with queerness. The book includes a truly delightful variety of organisms and cites dozens of scientific studies. In each profile, accompanied by stunning photographs, Davis highlights the wonderfully surprising and complex ways that plants and animals mate, reproduce, and live. . . . I’d like to shove this book into the hands of all the bigots, including the judges on the . . . Supreme Court. But even more than that (because what good would it really do?), I want to give this book to any queer or trans person who has ever felt alone, who has ever felt like they don’t belong. If you’ve ever felt like your body, your desires, your ways of loving, your family, or your gender isn’t 'natural,' this book is for you. Nature is beautiful, creative, mysterious, strange (complimentary), and overwhelmingly queer, and you are a part of nature."

— Book Riot

"The book is an absolute delight. . . . A Little Queer Natural History explodes like a colorful bomb—or perhaps like a fruiting fungus that disperses thousands of spores across the landscape, seeding countless new ways to understand the incandescent diversity of life beyond the binaries and boundaries humans have erected to constrain it. Such spores produce an almost hallucinogenic effect over the course of the book, illuminating connections and complexities beyond the everyday consciousness of sexuality and gender permitted within conventional cultural frameworks. . . . A masterful new chapter in the century-long story of LGBTQ advocacy that brings the insights of biological sciences to bear on our understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality."

— Society for US Intellectual History

From the Publisher