Radio 4 at 11.00: Political Animals - Sex-Switching Fish and Non-Binary Brains

[nauticant]

From same-sex bird partners to sex-switching fish, Lucy Cooke considers the latest research into sexed behaviour in animals and what it can tell us about male and female brains.

In the hope that it's going to be about science, I'll give it a go.

I might be taking one for the team here.

If she can name a single animal in the mammalian class that is able to sex switch, I'll eat my hat.

Well, she's halfway through and so far it's been about the science. The science is interesting. I'll report again at the end.

I was interested in her book and looked her up, but she has she/her in her bio which (rightly or wrongly) put me off further exploration. Curious to hear what you think nauticant

The scientist talking about the albatross switched randomly between sex and gender, strange for a scientist surely?

A lot of it was about the behaviour showing which sex the fish were. I haven't heard about the chromosomes but may have missed that.

@horseymum

The scientist talking about the albatross switched randomly between sex and gender, strange for a scientist surely?

Yy that was jarring.

And, inevitably....clownfish.

That was excellent. Absolutely fascinating. And I can't see that it had any implications for the trans debate at all. It was all about the way that female animals are basically overlooked in evolutionary studies. Biases and assumptions going unquestioned.

"The fluidity of sex in the animal kingdom". This is strictly true for certain species a long way from humans, and to be fair the programme didn't transpose this onto humans.

Some male frogs have taken over the parental of guarding the eggs and the young while the females are nowhere to be seen. "The fluid nature of frog parenting."

Courtship behaviour in certain bird species of female pairs is pretty much the same as female-male pairs. But the expert is going on about "the gender of the birds".

Yay! The compulsory mention of the sex-changing anemone fish (the clownfish). But again, it was about the science of this phenomenon in a certain species of fish.

On balance, I'll give this a qualified thumbs up. It was nearly all about sex and one theme was to decouple behaviour from sex. The main theme was to about removing bias from science in terms of recognising that the behaviour of female animals does not have to fit into human gender stereotypes.

She did well although closed the prgramme with ideological word soup: "A diverse chorus of genders [in science]", "A spectrum of sex attributes [not qualified to non-human]."

It did get a bit tiresome how she mentions time and time and time again how Darwin got some things wrong. Yeah, we get the message that a body of science getting on for 200 years ago might have needed to have been revised in the meantime.

There was the part where they were discussing what sex a clownfish was during its transition from male to female, with the expert seeming to say "How can you tell?" But the point was that the fish was in the midst of transition, so neither sex or both. Is there a precisely measurable point at which it stops being one sex and starts being the other? Probably not. But, so what? There was no suggestion that there are any sexes other than male or female.

No trans mammals then. I can make myself a sandwich for my lunch in that case. Hat survives another day in Genderwooland.

I caught an earlier episode of Political Animals ( there are three in total). She talked of how Darwin, and others of that time, viewed evolution through their own Victorian biases of 'dominant male, subordinate female', and how this has influenced what we all now believe about sexed behaviour in the animal kingdom. It was pretty damned interesting. Worth a listen at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014gt8

Sex, Monkeys and the 'Coy Female' Myth
Political Animals Episode 1 of 3

Zoologist Lucy Cooke is on a mission: to break down the 'sexist stereotype' she believes has permeated our understanding of the natural world...

In Political Animals, she sets out to prove that females of the species can be just as fiesty, ardent, manipulative, aggressive, varied, strategic and political as males - questioning some of the theories laid out by the 'father of evolution', Charles Darwin, and hearing from pioneering scientists moving evolutionary biology beyond a male-centric narrative.

For the opening episode, Lucy focuses on sex: uncovering stories of the female animals defying Darwin’s “coy” label, and using sexual strategies to further their own evolutionary influence.

This takes her on a journey from soliciting capuchin monkeys in the forests of Costa Rica, to studies of promiscuous fruit flies, to the northern jacana bird in Nicaragua, which relies on a harem of males to raise her chicks. Lucy also hears from scientists and specialists including Megan Mah, Joe Cain, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Patricia Gowaty, Robert Trivers and Salvador Mirales.

Featuring excerpts from ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’ by Charles Darwin, read by Derek Frood.