Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

This is not always as obvious as a bowerbird choosing a bejeweled shrine; it can also be “cryptic,” in which the female’s body, seemingly apart from her mind, makes choices. Some female animals, for example, can select the sperm of certain males over others after insemination, whether by altering their bodies’ pH, producing spermicidal compounds, or contracting their muscles to discard certain sperm, among other mechanisms. This choice may be informed by the Darwinian conception of fitness—when a male is perceived to possess genes that would create the greatest likelihood of offspring survival—but attempts to quantify this experimentally have failed in a surprising number of cases. The preferences of female animals, from moths to monkeys, seem frequently to be driven by perceptions of beauty, whether it increases offspring survival or not.