How zoology got female animals all wrong

Since Charles Darwin's time, zoology has been influenced by the preconceptions of hulking male and submissive female animals. Today, textbooks and wildlife films still much too frequently support this perspective.

A new book dispels this sexist, um, myth and provides a more thorough account of the function of female animals in the environment.

Animals are frequently used to illustrate the inherent differences between male and female people, as well as the idea that men are built to claim alpha position while women are meek. This is why the tale is important.

According to documentary filmmaker and author Lucy Cooke, whose book "Bitch: On the Female of the Species," which will be released in the United States on Tuesday, that viewpoint has been grossly exaggerated and doesn't hold up when you consider the diversity of the animal species.

According to Cooke, female animals are as as promiscuous, aggressive, competitive, and dynamic as their male counterparts and are equally responsible for generating evolutionary change.

Cooke, who holds an Oxford University master's degree in zoology, takes great pleasure in describing the lives of a riot of colorful animals to illustrate her point, including murderous meerkat mothers, African spotted hyenas with an 8-inch clitoris, menopausal orca matriarchs, and albatrosses that can form long-lasting lesbian partnerships.

Cooke told CNN that she was "very gratified" to learn about the variety of female experiences and that they aren't constrained by oppressive patriarchal norms.

The fallacy of women's monogamy

It frequently appears in wildlife documentaries. Animals that are male are fiercely promiscuous, whereas those that are feminine are coy, picky, and chaste.

However, swarms of female animals look for several mates for sex. During her heat, a female lion is reported to mate up to 100 times a day with various male suitors.

While constructing nests and feeding fledglings together, songbirds are socially monogamous, yet prior to nesting, 90 percent of female songbirds regularly engage in many sexual partners, according to study. Even though a single male songbird is rearing young with its female co-parent, a nest of eggs might have several dads. It is a fact that was discovered by DNA testing of eastern bluebird eggs, a method invented by Patricia Gowaty, an emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Cooke reports Gowaty as noting in her book, "I got a lot of flack from this study. "Even though it angered so many people, it seemed as though I had made a significant discovery. They had no idea that women could be anything but kind."

It wasn't until the 1990s that the ornithological community came to terms with the fact that female birds engaged in promiscuity, which paved the way for related studies on reptiles and amphibians. Overall, according to Cooke's book, specialists currently believe that real monogamy is only present in 7% of species.

Promiscuity to safeguard children

What function does all this sexual activity serve in the animal kingdom? It goes beyond simply increasing the likelihood of becoming pregnant. It's a tactic that, for some animals, could improve the chances that their offspring will survive.

Studies have found that when male langur monkeys in India assume control of a group, they frequently murder young that haven't been weaned. Since then, several additional ape species, including chimpanzees, as well as animals like lions, have exhibited the same behavior.

According to experts, female animals are compelled to have sex with male suitors both inside and outside of their group in order to confuse paternity, which protects their young and may coerce male partners into caring for and watching after their young. Female chimpanzees, who only have five or six offspring in their lifetime but may engage in sexual activity with dozens of male chimps hundreds of times, are known to exhibit aggressive sexuality. Barbary macaques and savanna baboons also exhibit this aggressive female sexual behavior.

Many people won't be comfortable with the notion that women may be just as sexually aggressive as men, according to Cooke.

However, being promiscuous for certain animals is about being a good mother.

The phallic anatomy of sexuality

You might believe that the genitalia are what distinguishes the sexes, but Cooke discovered that a large number of female animals have clearly phallic sexual anatomy.

Consider the female spotted hyena from Africa. It features an 8-inch clitoris that resembles the male penis in both location and form. In addition to having erections, this female hyena is bigger, more aggressive, and lives in matrilineal clans with up to 80 members, each of which is led by a female matriarch who serves as the clan's alpha.

The study of the spotted hyena and other "masculinized animals" like lemurs and mole rats has provided insight into the understudied topic of how an animal changes into a female.

In the past, it was believed that testosterone was the primary factor programming embryos to be male, with "female" assumed to be the passive default. But now, it is viewed as an outdated perspective on how men and women differ from one another.

masculine dominance

The alpha female has proven difficult for biology to accept. According to Cooke's book, researchers formerly derided fighting among female pinyon jays as "the avian equivalent of PMS."

But many animal communities, like the hyenas mentioned before, are ruled by women, and they occasionally turn violent.

Meerkat clans are led by a single female animal that controls reproduction. Meerkats are the adorable mongooses that raise up on their rear legs to search the African savanna. Her primary objective is to stop her female relatives from having children of their own; instead, she coerces them into raising her children. The alpha meerkat either kills her competitors once they achieve sexual maturity or drives them out of the group.

Cooperative breeding, Cooke continued, "which always makes me giggle because it's not actually that much. It is quite dictatorial.

In contrast to their near chimpanzee relatives, bonobos are a mostly female species. But they avoid conflict with one another. Instead, in order to reduce conflict and foster collaboration, female bonobos develop a strong sisterhood via grooming and mutual masturbation " Because we share a common ancestor with both bonobos and chimps, the bonobo offers an intriguing example of how dominance has nothing to do with gender. Everything depends on the habitat an animal finds itself in, "explained Cooke. There is no standard.

in the struggle between the sexes

Female equivalents have developed inventive strategies to manage the struggle between the sexes, even in situations where male animals are more powerful and sex is frequently compelled.

A relatively understudied bodily component, animal vaginas are being replicated by Patricia Brennan, an adjunct associate research professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her studies on the vagina of ducks and dolphins have shown that they are not just simple tubes. They have spirals and blind pockets that give them a distinct form.

She thinks female mallard ducks may decide which drake fertilizes their eggs by allowing or preventing the penis from moving. With dolphins, Brennan has discovered a related phenomena.

The female is not as much of a victim as you think she is in cases of male compulsion, which is prevalent among some species, because she has choice over who fertilizes her eggs, according to Cooke. "And as far as evolution is concerned, that's all that matters."

The next book by Cooke is already in the works. The subject? How Darwin misunderstood how animals behave.

"The harmful alpha male stereotype affects males just as much as it does women. It confines males to the notion that they should be combative and competitive, "She spoke. Darwinian thinking gives toxic masculinity a pass, according to some.