Sex on earth : a celebration of animal reproduction / Jules Howard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Howard, Jules, author.

Contributor:

James A. Crawford Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sexual behavior in animals.

Reproduction.

Physical Description:

272 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Sigma, 2014.

Summary:

1,000 million years ago, a sexual revolution occurred on Earth. Sex happened for the first time; from this moment the world became ever more colourful and bizarre, ringing with elaborate songs and dances, epic battles, and rallying cries as the desires of males and females collided, generation after generation. All of your ancestors took part and succeeded an unbroken chain of sex right back to the dawn of complex life on Earth. Well done you. Well done everything. The world in which we live rings, bleeds, and howls with sex. It's everywhere. Right now warring hordes are locking horns, preening feathers, rampaging lustfully across the savanna, questioning the fidelity of the ones they love. Birds are singing, flowers bloom. A million females choose; a billion penises ejaculate (or snap off); a trillion sperm battle, block and tackle. Sex made planet Earth sexy. Written in a brilliantly engaging style by biologist Jules Howard, this fascinating and highly readable work covers the how and why of sex on Earth, in all its diversity. From sperm wars to cuckoldry, hermaphrodites and virgin births, spent males, racy harems, clitoral births, hips, breasts and birdsong, penis-percussion, and those riskiest and most elusive of all traits, monogamy and true love, all this and more is discussed in Sex on Earth, as Jules takes us on a voyage of discovery of the ins and outs of animal reproduction.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Jurassic Pork 19

Chapter 2 The Irascible Hulk 41

Chapter 3 Waiting for Frog 'O' 59

Chapter 4 The Cloaca Monologues 75

Chapter 5 The Aedeagus Complex 91

Chapter 6 The Town that Sperm Built 103

Chapter 7 Land of the Sexless Zombie Time-travellers 121

Chapter 8 The Human Frequency 137

Chapter 9 The Insurmountable Hump 153

Chapter 10 The Pink in Evolution's Rainbow 171

Chapter 11 Mite of the Living Dead 185

Chapter 12 The Greatest Story Never Told 199

Chapter 13 Sex: The Arena Tour 217

Chapter 14 My Chemical Romance 237.

Notes:

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the James A. Crawford Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

1408193418

9781408193419

9781472912213

1472912217

OCLC:

894833676

Publisher Number:

99964806155