Sex Diversity in Nonhuman Animals

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)