{"id":6747,"date":"2010-08-18T17:23:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T16:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=6747"},"modified":"2013-09-18T03:21:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T02:21:24","slug":"latest-reading-dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2010\/08\/18\/latest-reading-dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Reading – Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>O.K. – so I was the last person on the planet to see E.T., I still watch TV on a cathode ray tube, and I’m seven years late reading Olivia Judson’s hugely entertaining, accessible, not to say stimulating, guide to evolutionary biology: Dr.Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation<\/a>\"\", making this an admittedly after-the-event review, but a recommendation all the same.<\/p>\n

Throughout the guide, Judson stays in character as sex therapist Dr Tatiana, helping all manner of creatures out with their sex problems – agony aunt style.<\/p>\n

\"Olivia<\/a>
Olivia Judson (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And creatures it is.\u00a0 Ranging from a stick insect jaded with the tedium of ten week copulations; to a praying mantis who finds sex so much more satisfying after biting off her lover’s head; to a fruit fly dismayed that he’s run out of sperm; to a queen bee’s concern that her mates leave their genitalia inside her after sex.<\/p>\n

Mixed in with these familiar heterosexual and homosexual practices are gang rape, cannibalism, self-sacrifice, and deception – all to a background of hopeless promiscuity.<\/p>\n

The entertainment is delivered by a fascinating cast of cads, bints, sluts, and whores, bonking away at romantic locations\u00a0 – including the inside of a rat’s intestines.<\/p>\n

\"Lestes<\/a>
Damsel flies “have evolved some of the fanciest penises around”\u00a0 Lestes sponsa (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s the language and tone then: spirited rather than crude I’d say, but probably not first choice for your great gran.<\/p>\n

The anthropomorphism is extreme, caricatured, and humorous enough to make any questions around ambiguity and appropriateness non-issues (at least for me).\u00a0\u00a0 It’s clever too, each section introducing a discussion on an aspect of evolutionary biology with some fun, if not a giggle, then quickly morphing into serious, yet always palatable, science.<\/p>\n

\"Stick<\/a>
Stick insects can copulate for 10 weeks continuously (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The concepts are familiar: sex ratios, altruism, asexual vs sexual reproduction, dangers of recessive genes and such like; so perhaps I’ve not been under a log after all.\u00a0 I kept getting flashbacks to ideas I’d first read about in Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene<\/a>\"\" or Matt Ridley’s The Red Queen<\/a>\"\".\u00a0 By comparison, Judson’s style in the guise of Dr Tatiana is deliberately and overtly entertaining; but not at the cost of scholarly rigor (there are 62 pages of\u00a0 Notes and Bibliography).<\/p>\n

\"Praying<\/a>
Male praying mantis prefer not to give head (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Previous reading certainly didn’t stop me picking up a bunch of new facts and figures on the more macabre and icky side of sexual reproduction.\u00a0 Knowledge any schoolboy\/girl\u00a0 would be proud to have in his\/her\u00a0 armoury.<\/p>\n

Insects dominate Dr Tatiana’s surgery hours, but mammals and birds\u00a0 do get a look in.\u00a0\u00a0 Like the girl hyena concerned over the size of her pseudo-phallus, or the moorhen bemused that his girlfriends are always fighting with each other.<\/p>\n

But now I’m giving too much away.<\/p>\n

Amazon have the paperback Dr Tatiana on for about \u00a36.50 in the UK, and there’s also a DVD of the TV series based on the book.\u00a0 No brainer – go get it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O.K. – so I was the last person on the planet to see E.T., I still watch TV on a cathode ray tube, and I’m seven years late reading Olivia Judson’s hugely entertaining, accessible, not to say stimulating, guide to evolutionary biology: Dr.Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, making this an admittedly after-the-event review, but … Continue reading Latest Reading – Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[175,843,5,105,568],"tags":[953,956,957,955,952,954],"class_list":["post-6747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-book-reviews","category-books","category-evolution","category-fun","tag-dr-tatiana","tag-dr-tatianas-sex-advice-to-all-creation","tag-evolutionary-biology","tag-insects","tag-olivia-judson","tag-sex"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-1KP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6747"}],"version-history":[{"count":116,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18172,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6747\/revisions\/18172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}