I don’t like the title, but otherwise think that Lucy Cooke’s new book is excellent. Primarily light-hearted popular science, the text skips merrily between brief anecdotes about interesting animal species and the human researchers who study them. And yet, this is also feminist science reportage in the best possible way, describing several occasions when societal prejudices that were commonly held among members of the research community resulted in misguided interpretations of data.

For example, for many years a particular suite of aggressive behaviors was believed to be “normal” for primates; many exceptions were known to exist, but each exception was believed to be a deviation from the typical primate behavior that would have been favored under typical environmental conditions. Instead, however, it seems that the aggressive behaviors of some of the best-studied primate species are derived characteristics, and, even within these species, researchers had simply devoted most of their time...

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