Sometimes a snake orgy is just a snake orgy

A new book examines what we can and can't learn about sex from watching bonobos, birds and earwigs.

By Susan McCarthy

Jul 22, 2002 | Marlene Zuk has the ability, all too rare among evolutionary biologists, to look at a snake orgy, or a battle to the death between female bluebirds, or a troop of baboons jockeying for social status, without crying, "It's our story exactly!"

As an evolutionary biologist and a feminist, Zuk says that while each discipline can shed light on the other, feminism "has more to offer biology than biology has to offer feminism." Feminism, after all, can help biologists identify their biases so they can study animal behavior more objectively, whereas in evolutionary biology it seems to be all too easy to go species-shopping for a comparison that will "prove" that women are naturally good with children, or that men are naturally good with howitzers, or that we're designed for polygamy, or that someone else should do the dishes. This kind of selective comparison is particularly common when it comes to matters of sex and sexuality.

Among the subjects Zuk discusses in this spirit are homosexuality in animals, infidelity in apparently monogamous animals, the evolution of the female orgasm, why bonobos have replaced dolphins as the Cool Species We Can Learn From, the evolutionary significance of menstruation, sexual stereotyping, the "myth of the ecofeminist animal," maternal instinct, the zany things animals do with sperm, the alleged Great Chain of Being, the dogmas of dominance hierarchies, and sex differences in math ability.

Zuk herself does much of her research with insects, in part because it is so much easier not to identify with their behavior and indulge in anthropomorphism than it is with chimpanzees, dolphins or other vertebrates.

In her discussion of homosexual behavior in animals, Zuk describes studying crickets and locating males in the grass by listening for their courtship songs. With any luck, she notes, she can find two crickets at a time by this method: the singing male and the object of his serenade, usually a female cricket. In the past, if she found a courting male with another male, she assumed that it was a case of mistaken identity. After reading Bruce Bagemihl's work compiling reports of homosexual behavior in a wide variety of birds and animals, she says, she is not so sure. Perhaps it should be considered homosexuality --- but what does that mean to a cricket? Can we really make the parallel? What about the times when she finds a courting cricket next to a leaf or twig? "Do we call that fetishism?"

An aside: In the spirit of full disclosure, I note that on this subject Zuk quotes a book review by this author, which appeared in this publication. In order to avoid the appearance of cronyism or logrolling I feel the need to insert a savage attack on Zuk at this point: The woman is unsound on the subject of earwigs. She admits to considering earwigs "cute and interesting" and to trying -- unsuccessfully -- to convert her students to this view. Had she ever planted tender lupine seedlings in her garden only to find them hideously chewed up in the morning, and had she gone out in the night to inspect her seedlings by flashlight in a frenzy of grief and concern, only to find earwigs stationed at the tip of each leaflet, remorselessly slashing at the delicate green flesh, I do not think the first word from her lips would have been "cute!" This is classic ivory-tower analysis, unmindful of ground truths the rest of us know from bitter experience. I concede that a mother earwig curled on her eggs is not without a certain charm --- until you consider the sap-splattered career that brought her to this point and the similar destiny of destruction that, when they hatch out, awaits the teeny-tiny miniature earwiglets.

Next Page: Then there's the little matter of infidelity

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