Abstract
When I was a child, Sunday night family television viewing always included Walt Disney. On some occasions the program would focus on a “family” of (usually) bears (but sometimes big cats or dolphins), and tell a story about the youngest cub getting temporarily lost, learning how to fish, or some such life lesson. Even as a child I found it incredible that these animals’ lives seemed to mirror human lives so completely, even though the cubs never went to school, had chores, read or wrote, and so on. As an adult, my skepticism toward the ways in which nonhuman animals supposedly exemplify human animal qualities like “the” family, fidelity, selfless care for young, and, perhaps above all, sex complementarity, has only increased.
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.
(J.B.S. Haldane, 1928: 298)
When animals do something that we like we call it natural. When they do something that we don’t like, we call it animalistic.
(J.D. Weinrich, 1982: 203)
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Suggested readings
Abramson, P. and Pinkerton, S. (eds) (1995) Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bagemihl, B. (1999) Biological Exuberance. Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Birkhead, T.R. and Møller, A. (1993b) “Female Control of Paternity,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 8: 100–4.
Denniston, R.H. (1980) “Ambisexuality in Animals,” in J. Marmor (ed.) Homosexual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal, New York: Basic Books, pp. 35–40.
Futuyama, D.J. and Risch, S.J. (1984) “Sexual Orientation, Sociobiology, and Evolution,” Journal of Homosexuality, 9: 157–68.
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© 2004 Myra J. Hird
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Hird, M.J. (2004). Sex Diversity in Nonhuman Animals. In: Sex, Gender, and Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510715_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230510715_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-2177-2
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