Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Начало книги

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

—LOUIS MACNEICE

… hugest whole creation may be less

incalculable than a single kiss

—E. E. CUMMINGS

Introduction

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this

emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and

stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN1

Any book on homosexuality and transgender in animals is necessarily unfinished, a work in progress. The subject is so vast, the types of behaviors so varied, and the number of species involved so large, as to defy any attempt at comprehensiveness. And the scientific research in this area is only in its infancy: new developments and discoveries are continually being made, and the extent of uncharted and as yet unknowable terrain is so great as to render any attempt at completeness hopelessly premature.

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