Bitch

What does it mean to be female?

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What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again.

Whether it's the female lemurs of Madagascar, dominating the males of their species both physically and politically, the female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii, or the murderous meerkat mothers of the Kalahari Desert, the bitches in BITCH overturn outdated binary expectations of bodies, brains, biology and behaviour.

In her trailblazing new book, Lucy Cooke offers a timely look at how sexist bias polluted evolutionary biology and through her riotous cast of bad-ass female animals shows the scientific patriarchy what's what.

Lucy Cooke's Bitch shows just how far we have come in seeing nature's females for what they actually are.'
Simon Ing, Telegraph

Fun, informative and revolutionary all at once, Bitch should be required reading in school. This is a joyous, and often hilarious, romp in which Cooke simultaneously does justice to the actual data, gives voice to the substantive contributions of women scientists, and demolishes bias, blindness and ignorance about sex in the academy and in the public. After reading this book one will never look at a clownfish, a barnacle, an orca, an albatross or a human the same way again. And the world will be better for it.
Augustin Fuentes, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and author of The Creative Spark

Lucy Cooke's marvellous Bitch blasts the dust off stuffy old ideas to celebrate the true and wildly diverse influence of femal creatures throughout the animal kingdom, revealing them to be every bit as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive and dynamic as males ... In chapters fizzing with X-rated factoids, Cooke merrily demolishes myth after myth about our wild sisters ... Never mean or boring. It's exhilarating to zip through the world with her as she points out what has been missed or misinterpreted.
Helen Brown, Telegraph

About Lucy Cooke

Lucy Cooke is a fellow of Durham University, a National Geographic explorer, TED talker and award-winning broadcaster with a Masters in zoology from New College, Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins.
Her first book, A Little Book of Sloth, was a New York Times bestseller and spawned a major TV series for Discovery and a BBC Radio 4 documentary. The Truth About Animals, her first long-form book, was shortlisted for the Royal Society prize and has been translated into nineteen languages. Her next book, Bitch: What Does it Mean to be Female?, was cited as one of the best books of the year by both the Telegraph and Guardian and was adapted into the BBC Radio 4 series Political Animals.
Lucy is a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, Guardian, Telegraph and New Scientist amongst other publications. She has written, produced and presented documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery. She has presented on the BBC’s Springwatch and is a regular on BBC Radio 4.

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