Olivia Judson: Dr Tatiana's sex advice to all creation

By MARGIE THOMSON

What are we doing here? You can get as metaphysical as you like, but when it comes down to it, the answer is really pretty simple: to have as much sex as possible, and to reproduce the species.

Most people won't require any persuading about at least the first half of that dictate but, while you may think you have acquaintances who are one-track minded, by the time you have romped a while with Dr Tatiana, you will realise that compared with much of the animal kingdom (of which we are, never forget, a part) we are fairly restrained in both the frequency of our desires, and in our tastes.

Evolutionary biology doesn't sound the sexiest of subjects, but under the treatment of Dr Tatiana (aka Judson), a Dear Abby, agony aunt persona who fields anguished inquiries from a multitude of insects and animals, it easily becomes so, literally and colloquially.

This is a book about sex, sex and more sex. It is also funny, more-ish, charming and lighter than you would have believed possible given that we are talking science.

"Dear Tatiana," writes Spooked in Gabon. "My boyfriend is the handsomest golden potto I ever saw. He's got beautiful golden fur on his back, creamy white fur on his belly, he smells delicious, and he has ever such dainty hands and feet. There's just one thing. Please, Dr Tatiana, why is his penis covered with enormous spines?"

"All the better to tickle you with, my dear," responds Dr Tatiana crisply, before launching into a lively discussion about the pressures males of most species are under to outdo one another in all aspects of love, given rampant female promiscuity.

Continuing this discussion, she ponders the question raised by Perplexed in Cloverhill: "Dear Dr Tatiana, I'm a queen bee, and I'm worried. All my lovers leave their genitals inside me and then drop dead. Is this normal?"

Tatiana responds: "For your lovers, this is the way the world ends - with a bang, not a whimper. When a male honeybee reaches his climax, he explodes, his genitals ripped from his body with a loud snap. I can see why you find it unnerving ... "

Dr Olivia Judson (she gained her doctorate in biological sciences from Oxford University) is an award-winning science journalist who is research fellow at Imperial College, London.

She has a prodigious capacity for research - her bibliography for this book achieves 37 pages - and despite her unfailingly light tone one understands that Dr Tatiana is no lightweight.

Her commentary is peppered with discussions about key biologists and their theories and discoveries, and among those who have offered enthusiastic reviews for this book overseas are Steve Jones, Robert Sapolsky and Matt Ridley.

You think your sex life's not all it could be? Just thank Mother Nature that you're not, for instance, a praying mantis. Cannibalism, usually practised by females on their hapless mates, is rampant among certain species, and this letter from I Like 'Em Headless in Lisbon introduces the subject.

"Dear Dr Tatiana," she writes. "I'm a European praying mantis, and I've noticed I enjoy sex more if I bite my lovers' heads off first. It's because when I decapitate them they go into the most thrilling spasms. Somehow they seem less inhibited, more urgent - it's fabulous. Do you find this too?"

Females in more than 80 species have been caught eating their lovers before, during or after sex, Dr Tatiana reveals.

The midges - tiny flies with big appetites - dispatch their lovers in a particularly horrible way. "The female captures her mate as she would any old prey and plunges her proboscis into his head while they link genitalia.

"Her spittle turns his innards to soup, which she slurps up, drinking until she's sucked him dry, then dropping his empty shell as casually as a child discards a dull toy. Only his manhood, which breaks off inside her, betrays the fact that this was no ordinary meal."

Aphrodisiacs, rape, homosexuality, home-making, the sharing of childcare, jealousy, unfaithfulness, monogamy (one of the most deviant behaviours in nature) - the field is wide and fascinating and, of course, whether we are reading about sharks, bull elephants or fruit flies, we cannot help but try to relate what we are learning to our own tame-by-comparison species.

Dr Tatiana doesn't help us much here: her goal is not a fill-in-the-gaps handbook to our own sexuality, and to really enjoy the research she is presenting we must simply accept it on its own terms. If you look up humans in the extensive index, you will see we are mentioned only around 14 times (once in connection with "superlovers" - a speculative entry only, I hasten to add).

Surprisingly, a word that scarcely makes it on to these pages is pleasure, and I would have thought this was an oversight. I for one would like to know to what extent pleasure drives or is a feature of the animal world's sexuality.

Interestingly, it's in the chapter on homosexuality that - spared the immediate goal of procreation - pleasure becomes an apparent goal in itself (among female bonobos, or male dolphins, for instance), although even here homosexual approaches can be just a way of exerting power over another individual.

"Simultaneous" is one of the great words in the human sexual lexicon, and here Judson has achieved a most rare synchronicity of a different kind - between science and humour. If you've nothing better to do one evening soon, Dr Tatiana could keep you amused, safely, for hours.

Chatto & Windus

$55