Capsule Reviews

Sex on Earth, Wild Connection, The Classification of Sex, and XL Love

Written byBob Grant

| 4 min read

Listen with Speechify

0:00

4:00

By Jules Howard Bloomsbury USA, November 2014 For about a billion years, Earth has been a pretty sexy place. Since the first lowly eukaryotes gave it a whirl, sexual reproduction has spread to become a hallmark of kingdom Animalia. Zoologist and nature writer Jules Howard’s latest book is a paean to the kaleidoscopic forms, functions, and behaviors that have ushered the procreative act on its evolutionary journey to ubiquity. “For every burly elephant seal guarding a harem, there is a hermaphroditic slug swarming over a dog turd, or a nearly extinct spider being encouraged to have sex in someone’s kitchen,” he writes. “A panda sniffs a piece of wood; a toad safely crosses a road to find its ancestral breeding ground; a dolphin gently gooses ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member? Login Here

Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
View Full Profile