DR. TATIANA'S
SEX ADVICE
TO ALL CREATION
The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex

	Who is Dr Tatiana?
	The book rests on a device--organisms writing letters to an agony aunt--that is intrinsically anthropomorphic. Isn't anthropomorphism something biologists try to avoid?
	In this book, Dr Tatiana advises organisms ranging from sagebrush crickets to marine iguanas, and even green algae. Why are humans not among the lovelorn organisms who write in?
	Which aspects of sex do humans usually enquire about?
	Which species is Dr Tatiana?
	In the last chapter, which addresses the subject of why sex exists at all, you switch away from a sex-advice column. Instead, Dr Tatiana is the presenter of a show called Under the Microscope--The Deviant Lifestyle Show! She has a guest with a problem, and a raucous audience of organisms that heckle and shout out questions and suggestions. Why did you alter the format like this?
Who is Dr Tatiana?
Dr. Tatiana is sex advisor to all creatures great and small. No organism is too microscopic for her attention; no problem is too bizarre. Her special brand of wisdom comes from her detailed knowledge of evolution and her formidable knowledge of natural history. And her personality? Witty but rigorous, compassionate but stern, racy but tasteful.
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The book rests on a device--organisms writing letters to an agony aunt--that is intrinsically anthropomorphic. Isn't anthropomorphism something biologists try to avoid?
When I studied animal behavior in college, I was told anthropomorphism was a Big No-No. But as I read more widely, I concluded this stance is misguided. Two of the greatest evolutionary biologists--Darwin and Bill Hamilton (my PhD supervisor, and my nomination for the 20th century biologist most like Darwin)--regularly put themselves in the place of the organisms they were watching, and I think that doing so helped them to some of their most profound insights. As long as everyone understands that we don't know what is really going on inside an animal's head--that anthropomorphism is a metaphor, not a description--considering life from an organism's point of view can be a powerful aid to the imagination, and therefore, a powerful tool. Indeed, I think the real danger with anthromorphism is in treating it as an intellectual sin. A taboo on anthropomorphism has the effect of leading us to believe that humans are so different from other animals that we can't possibly relate to them. But that's wrong.
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In this book, Dr Tatiana advises organisms ranging from sagebrush crickets to marine iguanas, and even green algae. Why are humans not among the lovelorn organisms who write in?
Well, humans already have lots of agony aunts to write to, so it seemed unfair to deprive another organism of the chance to write to Dr Tatiana. In any case, I wanted to make the point I just mentioned--that humans are not nearly so different from other organisms as we sometimes pretend. And I thought the most effective way to do this was to have other organisms asking questions about subjects that humans tend to be preoccupied with.
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Which aspects of sex do humans usually enquire about?
Humans tend to ask me about one of two subjects: infidelity and homosexuality. Usually the questioner seems to be trying to find some biological justification for his or her moral position. For example, social conservatives like to argue that homosexuality is "unnatural" because homosexuals tend not to have children, which means (the social conservatives imagine--wrongly, as it turns out) that homosexuality cannot have a genetic basis. But such lines of thought betray a fundamental misunderstanding. Human ethics and morals have nothing to do with what is "natural" and what is not. As I say in my chapter about the evolution of sexual violence, evolutionary biology can potentially tell us a great deal about why we are the way we are. But it can tell us nothing about what we would like to become.
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Which species is Dr Tatiana?
Human. Absolutely: that's why she anthropomorphizes.
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In the last chapter, which addresses the subject of why sex exists at all, you switch away from a sex-advice column. Instead, Dr Tatiana is the presenter of a show called Under the Microscope--The Deviant Lifestyle Show! She has a guest with a problem, and a raucous audience of organisms that heckle and shout out questions and suggestions. Why did you alter the format like this?
In the other chapters, I could easily break the subject matter into problems faced by many different organisms. In this chapter, I wanted to focus on one organism: a small animal, known as a bdelloid rotifer, that lives in patches of wet moss. Bdelloid rotifers are notorious in evolutionary circles because they do something that evolutionary theorists thought was impossible. That is, they only reproduce asexually--by laying eggs that don't need to be fertilized--and have done so for at least 85 million years. In other words, they are "ancient asexuals". Asexuality often evolves, but it rarely persists for long: asexual groups tend to go extinct almost immediately. This is one of the chief reasons that evolutionary biologists believe that sex is necessary. But if the bdelloid rotifers can live for millions of years without sex--why can't the rest of us? Having the bdelloid rotifer as a guest on a TV show seemed to me to be a good way of keeping the chapter focused on this question. Moreover, ancient asexuality is a contentious topic in evolutionary theory, and I thought that the best way to convey the debate would be to have a debate. Each member of the audience who speaks is advocating a real position held by real scientists. For example, a ram argues that most claims of ancient asexuality have turned out to be bogus, and so probably, the bdelloid rotifers' claim to ancient asexuality will turn out to be bogus too. Several people in the pages of scientific journals have made this argument. However, the rotifer is able to show (by referring to the very latest studies) that in fact, the bdelloid rotifers really are ancient asexuals. And so on.