Customer Reviews

A Natural History of Sex: The Ecology and Evolution of Mating Behavior

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Lots of VERY interesting facts and pretty good analysis+presentation.
The book is not very comprehensive in dealing with issues - perhaps that is its strength. I have enjoyed reading Dawkins, Gould, Maynard Smith before. This book is only slightly less enjoyable. I will tuck it between 'Red Queen (Matt Ridley)' and 'Promiscuity (Tim Birkhead)' with 'The Mating Mind (Geoffrey Miller)' somewhere nearby in my library.

This is a great book to have lying around for a quick read. Topics include such cocktail party favorites as sperm competition and internal fertilization, the effectiveness of abortion in animals, progeny without sex, and tons more great stuff. Forsyth writes well and has an obvious passion for his topic. For us biologist types this is the stuff that spiced up our seventh grade conversations - for others to whom these stories are new the book will likely challenge a whole lot of preconceived ideas about animals as well as humans.

This short but informative paperback is packed with interesting facts. It also gives great insight to many mating behaviors to help beginners learn about what shapes our evolutionary sexual behaviors. The book is not widely available but could also be used as a great learning tool in classrooms.

This book is so good that I bought 4-5 copies and gave them to friends. I am a biologist in graduate school but read this as an undergraduate. If I hadn't already been interested in biology, this would have done it for me...but it just poured fuel on the fire for me.

I really really highly recommend this book for a layperson or someone with some existing knowledge who wants to get a summarization of many concepts in sex (in the biological sense). Please see my response to Eris's review for an alternate opinion on the book that is much more extensive than this blurb.

The book came early and was in excellent shape for a discarded library book! Very happy with this purchase.

This book is entirely superficial and frequently inaccurate. I would have expected far better from someone who went to Harvard and works at the Smithsonian. The author repeats the discredited ideas of menstrual synchrony in human females and that the rate of illegitimacy among humans is 10%. (It's probably somewhere from 1% to 3.5%.)

In its section on "Female Versus Female" competition it shows a drawing of two brown hares fighting with the caption, "Brown hare: Females duke it out," while the text below it says, "But careful videotaped studies revealed that most of the boxing was done by females cuffing away unwanted male suitors." So what was it even doing in the chapter on "Female Versus Female" competition?

In discussing incest it states, "With a few minor exceptions to be discussed later, every culture prohibits primary incest -- that is brother-sister or offspring-parent matings. Most forbid marriages between cousins." Although I cannot categorically state that that's incorrect, I do know that most developed nations ALLOW marriage between first cousins. It also quotes a number of statistics showing that the chance of genetic disease among the children of first cousin marriages is up to 28% versus 6% for "non-incestuous" marriages. But a 2002 review by Bennett et al, Journal of Genetic Counseling, (admittedly that's a year after this book was republished) indicated that first cousin marriages produce children with only a 2-3% higher risk of birth defects and slightly more than 4% risk of dying prematurely.

Just as bad as the inaccuracies is the way the writer ignores entire areas of sexual behavior such as homosexuality (other than homosexuality for heterosexual reproduction) with the dismissive comment, "It may not be profitable to speculate long on the evolution of a polymorphous, culturally influenced phenomenon such as homosexuality" completely overlooking the fact that homosexuality is found in other species such as monkeys, penguins, sheep, etc.

Although the author goes on about paternal (un)certainty, there isn't a single mention of maternal (un)certainty. He completely ignores the sexual behavior of "egg dumping" (the process by which a female causes another female to raise her offspring). Seems like this behavior could have been addressed either in the chapters on female competition or illegitimacy.

But that would be another problem with this book because...

What it does cover, it covers in the most superficial manner. Typical chapter length is only 8 pages. The chapter on "Orgasm and Inertia" was barely more than four pages long.

In the chapter on "Virgin Birth" I don't even know how you can have a general discussion written for the layperson about parthenogenesis without mentioning turkeys. Most people aren't going to care that the Solenobia reproduces through parthenogenesis while those same people are going to be amazed to the point of disbelief that a female turkey can make baby turkeys without the help of a male.

In the same chapter that doesn't mention turkeys the author states, "All members of a clone are genetically identical, and as result, the interests of the individual are identical to those of the group. There can be no selfishness or cheating among members of a clone." That's a bold statement with profound implications. So does it mean that there is no such thing as a Parent-Offspring conflict with this type of reproduction? That a mother turkey has conflict with her sexually reproduced chick, but not her cloned one? I find that difficult to believe and about as likely as the idea that identical twins (who are, of course, clones) are never selfish or cheat one another -- sure couldn't prove that by the identical twins I've known.

The final problem I have with this book is its tone. The writer takes a patronizing and gender biased tone with much of his exposition. He loves the word "polygyny" and its derivatives, but I can't recall a single use of the word "polyandry" even though polyandry is the equivalent term for the same form of sexual behavior practiced by the females of numerous species. Instead of being "polyandrous," females who mate with more than one male are universally and constantly described as "promiscuous" by the author.

If I'm catching errors & I'm not even a biologist, I can only imagine what inaccuracies someone who is well studied in this area would discover. The only reason I actually finished the book was to be able to do a complete review of it. And the only reason I'm reviewing it is because all of the other reviews were positive (that's why I bought it), so I wanted to provide a counter viewpoint.

Although this book contains what might be some fascinating information, instead of being able to read this book with confidence, due to the omissions, obvious errors and the shallowness of this book, I find myself treating with suspicion anything I read in it. Because of that reason I have to summarize by saying, "I spent 4 cents plus shipping for this book and it wasn't even worth that."