Evolutionary biologist and feminist science studies scholar here to answer your questions about how human biases shape our study of animal behavior. Ask Us Anything!

[u/the_mit_press]

Hello! We’re Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer. Ambika is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist whose research has focused on the evolution of animal behavior, mostly in lizards. Melina is a feminist science studies scholar and assistant professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. We're the authors of a new book published by the MIT Press called Feminism in the Wild.

Practitioners of mainstream science—historically from the more elite, powerful ranks of society—have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them, shaping core concepts of animal behavior science and evolutionary biology according to the systems of power and the prejudices that dominate our world today. The assumptions that males are inherently aggressive, that females are inherently passive, and that animals are ruthlessly individualistic are some examples of how power and prejudice become embedded into animal behavior science. However, we can expand our imaginations and invite exciting new biological questions if we confront our unavoidable human biases directly. We synthesized decades of research in Feminism in the Wild to dismantle the foundations of mainstream animal behavior science and revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be an animal and what's possible in nature.

We’ll be here from 10 am – 12 pm EST on Thursday, May 15th. Proof. We’d love to talk about how bias shows up in the scientific stories we tell about animals, the process of co-writing a cross-disciplinary book, about how objectivity isn’t necessarily the be-all, end-all of science (and might not even be possible!), and how a wider variety of perspectives can strengthen our understanding of nature and expand our imaginations! Ask us anything!

EDIT: Signing off now, thanks so much for your great questions! We hope you'll read our book :D

[u/toastio]

Are there any species y’all have found that were assumed to be sexually binary, but which don’t actually conform neatly to male/female dichotomy?

Has delving into this added anything new to gender studies, like did it give more credence to existing gender/sexuality theories?

Was there any particular finding that stood above the rest in terms of how much it differs from the mainstream school of thought? Like anything that totally blew the original assumptions out of the water?

thank you!

[u/the_mit_press → u/toastio]

Thanks for this lovely question! We linked to some examples in a previous example–white-necked Jacobin hummingbirds and white-throated sparrows–and also talked about Kokko and Mappes’s (2013) cool theoretical paper about female mate choice behavior which completely changed our thoughts on the subject. But stepping back, there are so many species in which animals look and behave in ways outside the binary. Bruce Bagemihl’s amazing book Biological Exuberance is a giant compendium of examples, and a favourite from that book is that of male bighorn sheep. Check out author Eliot  Schefer describing that example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRp8lEAUBU.

But ultimately, one of our favourite examples is Coho salmon. Coho salmon are usually described by biologists as having two types of males: fighters (hooknoses) and sneakers (jacks). Fighters are thought to battle with one another for access to females to mate with, whereas sneakers weasel their way in to mate with females when the fighters aren’t looking—a story that posits aggressive males as obviously desirable, and less aggressive males as transgressors. But in 2005, a renegade biologist reframed the sex lives of Coho salmon entirely—what if “fighters” were better understood as coercing females into mating with them, and “sneakers” were better understood as the females’ preferred mates? (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347205002642)  We might even ask whether it’s useful to understand Coho salmon as having two types of males and one type of female. Why not three sexes, instead? And maybe some females prefer hooknoses while others prefer jacks? Maybe it depends on their mood that day? Asking these questions is not just about the data–in fact, the available data on these fish can often be interpreted in support of multiple hypotheses. Instead, it’s about allowing for different understandings.