The Natural World is Queerer Than You Think

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a female clownfish dies, a male clownfish can switch sexes and reproduce with other females. Some morpho butterflies have one male wing, and one female. In some populations of giraffes, about 95% of sexual activity is homosexual. In his book, “A Little Queer Natural History,” science writer Josh Davis gives a sampling of the enormous variety of gender and sexual behaviors in the plant, fungal and animal world and the ways some scientists have twisted themselves into knots to find non-sexual explanations for gay sex in animals. We talk to Davis about the gender fluid, intersex, asexual, gay, gender changeable, multi-sexual, rainbow splendor of the natural world. Guests: Josh Luke Davis, science writer, Natural History Museum, London; author, "A Little Queer Natural History" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:47.5	Thank you. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Laura Clivens in for Alexis Madrigal.
1:04.0	Did you know that about a fifth of Black Swan couples are made up of two males?
1:08.5	And those pairs are often more successful at rearing their
1:11.8	young than female male pairs, or that some morpho butterflies have one wing that's female
1:16.9	and one that's male. Science writer Josh Davis brings us the book A Little Queer Natural History,
1:22.9	which shows that the astonishing diversity of animals, plants, and fungi extends to their sex and sexual behaviors.
1:29.6	We'll talk with Davis, and we want to hear from you.
1:32.4	What questions do you have about sex, gender, and sexuality in the natural world?
1:37.0	That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Laura Clivens in for Alexis Madrigal. It's often said that around 1,500 species of animals exhibits some form of homosexual behavior. But in his book, A Little Queer Natural History, Josh Davis writes,
2:02.7	this figure is likely a massive underestimate. Homosexual behavior is found in animals across the tree of
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