A fun look at evolutionary biology

books:

	• Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex Olivia Judson Metropolitan Books, 2002 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very amusing and informative

Dr. Tatiana writes an advice column for members of all species and organisms that wish to write to her. She specializes in answering their questions about sex and dispensing sound advice.
For example, a yellow dung fly wants to know how to make its sperm more attractive; a fig wasp wonders why all the males she knows bite each other in half; an elephant is worried because its penis has turned green; a mother manatee frets because her son appears to prefer other males.
It turns out that homosexuality is common in the animal world, that femals are mostly promiscuous and that monogomy is exceedingly rare in nature, (she calls it one of the most deviant behaviors in biology) and that the battle of the sexes is real and can be brutal (and the females often win).
This book is a breezy read. Tatiana is a witty raconteur with an apparently inexhaustible font of knowledge about the weird and wonderful world of sex. The point of existence, she maintains, is to survive and reproduce. Genetic mutations and behavioral modifications that confer an advantage in pursuing these goals will flourish. Species that do not adapt will die out.
Though written in a jokey way, this is a serious book. It provides a wonderful picture of the sheer vast variation of the natural world and the dynamic pace of evolution.
Perfect for the teen interested in science (and sex) and for all curious adults.
For more about me and my book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel, (where the sex is tastefully done) go to www.alanelsner.com.

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A fun look at evolutionary biology

This is a fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, look at the evolutionary biology of how many different organisms developed their genders and their reproduction methods.

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Sex Advice

What do you get when you cross a biology textbook, a Dr. Ruth show, a Dear Abby column, and a "Far Side" cartoon? Well, the offspring might be a brilliantly original book named Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation. This collection answers the desperate questions from species as varied as the Australian redback spider to the Louisiana black vulture with Dr. Tatiana's practical, reassuring, detailed explanations. It seems the worry on everyone's mind is, "Am I normal?"

Move over, Dr. Phil. Author Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist, award-winning science journalist, graduate of Stanford, and doctorate of Oxford University. Writing as Dr. Tatiana, Judson transforms both difficult scientific ideas and the sometimes-awkward discussion of the (ah-hem!) birds and the bees into accessible, often hilarious reading material. Evidently, virgin births, homosexuality, variety in size and shape of genitalia, elaborate courtship rituals, and cannibalism are not so unusual in nature as one may think. Dr. Tatiana gives her readers - be they insect, animal or human - a sigh of relief along with a much-needed chuckle at our own foibles as she explains, from her expert but kind perspective, why we do the things we do.

And herein lies the rub. While I see Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice ...as a clever way to teach a wealth of knowledge about natural science, biology, animal behavior, and genetics, I know there are many folks who would balk. The first time I read this book, I wished it could have been included in my high school science class, and fondly remembered time spent in the classrooms of Mr. and Mrs. Puskar, where quirky often served as mnemonic. But I know, especially now, that eyebrows would go way up, and corners of mouths would go way down, at the words "SEX ADVICE", let alone that the subtitle, which announces this little volume as "The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex." If "sex advice" in any classroom context is murky ground, then "evolutionary" anything these days is a cause for all-out war.

At the end of September of each year, the American Library Association reminds us to celebrate our freedom to read by marking "Banned Book Week." If Dr. Tatiana isn't on the list of banned books, I'm sure it easily could be. That makes me sad, because I don't like that learning details about the stunning array of life on earth could be seen as bad, harmful, or sinful. Whether you believe it's God's creation or just critters, they still do the things so deliciously described here. Few people have a problem with their kids watching a Discovery channel special about the Lamprologus ocellatus, a fish that lives in one of the Great Lakes of tropical Africa? Somehow, this is different. I guess the real debate comes when Dr. Tatiana (or any biology professor) starts explaining the WHY behind behavior in terms of evolution. Then, the main "worry" of living beings is not, as the cute letters of bugs and fish may suggest, about being normal, but about reproducing and spreading your genes. That does shoot a big hole in the theories espoused in Rick Warren's best-selling book, "The Purpose Driven Life". Not to mention some religious texts, like the best-selling book of all time.

I'm not going to provide a neat little resolution to this debate, not that I could even if I wrote a dissertation instead of a book review. I'm just going to recommend that you grab a copy of Dr. Tatiana and take yourself, the whimsical and weird of nature, and the evolutionary debate on the light side for a few hours. Learn a lot, laugh a lot, and celebrate the fact that in the United States, you can read about a subject from all different angles.

Author of "Hobo Finds A Home" and editor of "Of A Predatory Heart"

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Dr. Tatianas Sex Advice to All Creation is a unique guidebook to sex. It reveals, for example, when necrophilia is acceptable and who should commit bestiality with whom. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, and when to eat your lover. It also advises on more mundane matterssuch as male pregnancy and the joys of a detachable penis.Entertaining, funny, and marvelously illuminating, the book comprises letters from all creatures worried about their bizarre sex lives to the wise Dr. Tatiana, the only sex columnist in creation with a prodigious knowledge of evolutionary biology. Fusing natural history with advice to the lovelorn, blending wit and rigor, she is able to reassure her anxious correspondents that although the acts they describe might sound appalling and unnatural, they are all perfectly normalso long as you are not a human. In the process, she explains the science behind it all, from Darwins theory of sexual selection to why sexual reproduction exists at all. Applying human standards to the natural world, in the end she reveals the wonders of both.

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