QUEER DUCKS (AND OTHER ANIMALS)
ELIOT SCHREFER, illustrated by J.R. ZUCKERBERG
� 2022 Katherine Tegan Books
$17.99
240 pages

The year was 1834, and German zoologist August Kelch couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. It wasn't that he'd never noticed mating doodlebugs before, but the two he'd just found were both male! He chalked it up to the only thing he could think of: an act of perversion.

You can't entirely blame him: for centuries, early theologians and scientists, lacking the proper language, noted that animals' love lives sometimes didn't match the boy-meets-girl ideal then ascribed to humans, so they wrongly condemned it in the only ways they knew.

The thing is, animal sexuality varies so much that they might have overlooked other examples that could have proved the naturalness of it all. They may have seen mating animals and assumed something different than the truth. Psychologists call it "confirmation bias" — seeing what you're looking for.

But in fact a pair of cats or dolphins, tête-à-tête, may actually both be male. A male wrasse might have changed gender for mating purposes, or one may have observed a bonobo, whose species is notoriously promiscuous. You might be watching a deer with a same-sex "dear."

Every farmer knows that cows will mount other cows in heat. Scientists have observed mating activity among female macaques lacking nearby males. Albatrosses form pair bonds without mating, and wild geese sometimes form throuples to care for a nest.

Maybe it matters to the individual animal, and maybe it doesn't. (Which, suggests author Eliot Schrefer, is half of an intriguing question: Why does that same behavior in humans matter to us?)

So you've noticed some embarrassing activity at the dog park or the zoo, and you've waived it away by saying it's a matter of dominance or a power play among animals. But, as you'll ask yourself while reading Queer Ducks (and Other Animals), what if it's not?

Another question you might pose: Is it fair to compare a dog or elephant to a human in this way, or is it anthropomorphizing? Scientists tend to hate the latter; Schrefer does both here, proving that the behavior so often condemned in Homo sapiens is perfectly natural in the animal kingdom, while also urging readers to see the ridiculousness of affirming one while lambasting the other.

The point is made, though it can get heavy-handed at times. Still, readers won't be able to keep their thoughts from being provoked.

Also full of interviews with scientists and biologists and a nice biography of the author too, this book is informative, eye-opening, and just plain fun to read. Yep, get Queer Ducks (and Other Animals), or you'll be a monkey's uncle.