This book is a review about how animals beget other animals. It must be quite difficult to write about sex in a way that is neither coy nor coarse and which will keep the attention of the reader with whatever moral and personal baggage they might bring to the subject.
The author tells us of her IUD (which I found slightly too much information) and skips through the pages of this book with an open, ‘there’s nothing to be embarrassed about here’ tone which works pretty well. The trouble was, I didn’t find the subject terribly interesting. There were interesting passages of intercourse of course, but half way through the book, facing chapters on sexually transmitted infections and dirty old men my interest was beginning to fade out rapidly.
This is a good review and explanation of the ins and outs of mating in the animal kingdom but it didn’t really grab my attention in a way that I thought it might.
The Nature of Sex: the ins and outs of mating in the animal kingdom by Carina Bondar is published by Orion Books.
Inglorious: conflict in the uplands by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury – for reviews see here. Updated paperback edition now out.
Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson.
I have a few hardback copies of A Message from Martha left to sell at paperback prices – but not many.
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Plants doing sex are much more interesting.
For one thing they often do it with animals (if you like that sort of thing). But even more salaciously, their male gametes, pollen, tend to have species identifying characteristics which can hang around in ancient sediments for us to view any time at leisure. In other words, even from deep time, plants can still send us sexy signals.
I could never understand why explanation of reproductive matters is ever referred to as “The birds and the bees”. In the former the process seems so haphazard as to endanger survival and in the latter the complexity of the social structure not to mention haplodiploidy is irrelevant in human terms. A description of the Hokey Cokey might serve better.
Yes! The idea that when a young girl is ready to procreate she should run off into the countryside pursued by a swarm of men (of whatever state of ploidy) intent on inseminating her the moment they catch up is hardly the model of sexual etiquette that anyone vaguely civilized would wish to promote!
The more one thinks about it the more inappropriate the analogy seems…
“intent on inseminating her”
If they knew they would die almost immediately afterwards maybe they wouldn’t be so keen.