Published in 2022
383 pages
11 hours and 54 minutes
Lucy Cooke is a New York Times best-selling author, award-winning broadcaster, National Geographic explorer and TED talker with a Masters in zoology from New College Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins. Lucy has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times and Telegraph and is a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine. Her first book The Unexpected Truth About Animals was short-listed for the Royal Society prize and has been translated into 18 languages. Her latest Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution, and the Female Animal (also Bitch: On the Female of the Species in the US) was published in 2022 to critical acclaim. The UK launch was accompanied by a BBC Radio 4 series ‘Political Animals’, written and hosted by Lucy. Lucy has written, produced and presented prime time TV documentaries for BBC, PBS, Animal Planet and National Geographic. She is an accomplished public speaker and has performed at a range of events from the Royal Institution to Glastonbury music festival and the prestigious TED Women.
What is this book about?
What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again.
In the last few decades, a revolution has been brewing in zoology and evolutionary biology. Lucy Cooke introduces us to a riotous cast of animals, and the scientists studying them, that are redefining the female of the species.
Meet the female lemurs of Madagascar, our ancient primate cousins that dominate the males of their species physically and politically.
Or female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii.
Or the meerkat mothers of the Kalahari Desert—the most murderous mammals on the planet.
The bitches in Bitch overturn outdated binary expectations of bodies, brains, biology and behaviour. Lucy Cooke’s brilliant new book will change how you think—about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in animals and also the very forces that shape evolution
