Sex on Earth
A Celebration of Animal Reproduction
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Narrated by:
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Jon Caruth
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By:
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Jules Howard
About this listen
On thousand million years ago, a sexual revolution occurred on Earth. Sex happened for the first time; from this moment the world became ever more colourful and bizarre, ringing with elaborate songs and dances, epic battles, and rallying cries as the desires of males and females collided, generation after generation. All of your ancestors took part and succeeded - an unbroken chain of sex right back to the dawn of complex life on Earth. Well done you. Well done everything.
The world in which we live rings, bleeds, and howls with sex. It's everywhere. Right now warring hordes are locking horns, preening feathers, rampaging lustfully across the savanna, questioning the fidelity of the ones they love. Birds are singing, flowers bloom. A million females choose; a billion penises ejaculate (or snap off); a trillion sperm battle, block and tackle.
Sex made planet Earth sexy.
Written in a brilliantly engaging style by biologist Jules Howard, this fascinating and highly engaging work covers the how and why of sex on Earth, in all its diversity. From sperm wars to cuckoldry, hermaphrodites and virgin births, spent males, racy harems, clitoral births, hips, breasts and birdsong, penis-percussion, and those riskiest and most elusive of all traits, monogamy and true love, all this and more is discussed in Sex on Earth, as Jules takes us on a voyage of discovery of the ins and outs of animal reproduction.
©2014 Jules Howard (P)2014 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Ravenmaster
- My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London
- By: Christopher Skaife
- Narrated by: Christopher Skaife
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The title of Ravenmaster is a serious title indeed, and after decades of serving the Queen, Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife took on the added responsibility of caring for the infamous ravens. In The Ravenmaster, he lets listeners in on his life as he feeds his birds raw meat and biscuits soaked in blood, buys their food at Smithfield Market, and ensures that these unusual, misunderstood, and utterly brilliant corvids are healthy, happy, and ready to captivate the four million tourists who flock to the Tower every year.
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A Classic, I Was Spellbound! Master Story Telling!
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 10-08-18
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Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You
- A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World
- By: Dan Riskin
- Narrated by: Dan Riskin
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be.
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Just a bunch of random animal behaviors.
- By Goddess on 05-18-23
By: Dan Riskin
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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The Dragon Behind the Glass
- A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World's Most Coveted Fish
- By: Emily Voigt
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A young man is murdered for his prized pet fish. An Asian tycoon buys a single specimen for $150,000. Meanwhile, a pet detective chases smugglers through the streets of New York. Delving into an outlandish realm of obsession, paranoia, and criminality, The Dragon Behind the Glass tells the story of a fish like none other: a powerful predator dating to the age of the dinosaurs.
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A "must read" for all fish professionals.
- By Fishgen on 06-26-16
By: Emily Voigt
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Time, Love, Memory
- A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Beak of the Finch, brings his brilliant reporting skills to the story of Seymour Benzer, the Brooklyn-born maverick scientist whose study of genetics and experiments with fruit fly genes has helped revolutionize or knowledge of the connections between DNA and behavior both animal and human.
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This is a profound science book
- By Timothy A. Smith on 05-12-10
By: Jonathan Weiner
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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Wesley the Owl
- The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl
- By: Stacey O'Brien
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with the same heartwarming sentiment that made the memoir Marley & Me a runaway best seller, biologist and owl expert Stacey O'Brien chronicles her rescue of an adorable, abandoned baby barn owl - and their astonishing and unprecedented 19-year life together.
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Maybe good for children
- By Michael on 12-15-08
By: Stacey O'Brien
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The Fire Seekers
- The Babel Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Richard Farr
- Narrated by: Scott Merriman
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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An undeciphered language in Crete. A rash of mysterious disappearances, from Bolivia to Japan. An ancient warning at the ruins of Babel. And a new spiritual leader, who claims that human history as we understand it is about to come to an end.
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A fresh story!
- By AB on 02-08-15
By: Richard Farr
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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The Last Crocodile Hunter
- By: Bob Irwin, Amanda French
- Narrated by: David Tredinnick
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Bob Irwin's extraordinary life as a wildlife pioneer, father to wildlife warrior Steve and founder of Australia Zoo, told in his own words. Bob Irwin grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, where his passion for wildlife was born. A near-death experience while working as a plumber made Bob realise he needed to follow his dreams, so he and his wife, Lyn, moved their young family to Queensland, where they opened a wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast. The Irwin children grew up in around the Beerwah Reptile and Wildlife Park....
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Great story!
- By Amazon Customer on 01-06-22
By: Bob Irwin, and others
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The Most Perfect Thing
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shapes they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of eggshells created, and why do they vary? And which end of an egg is laid first - the blunt end or the pointy end?
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Great book about eggs!!
- By Timothy on 03-24-21
By: Tim Birkhead
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
- By: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.
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This is an unexpected wonder. The quiet virtues of the snail reflect the quiet voyage of the author.
- By Frances on 08-03-15
What listeners say about Sex on Earth
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sasha
- 03-09-19
I loved this Book
I'm doing a personal project on the evaluation of animal reproduce and this book was a perfect missing piece. It also gave me great book references too.
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- San Diego Gregg
- 01-10-15
Good Stuff
Nice to know we (humans) don't have a market on sex. Insects, birds, amphibians and others seem to have evolved some very peculiar ways of propagating their genes. Very fun and informative read.
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- Jessica
- 01-02-18
A very interesting and thought provoking listen!
What a fascinating book! It truly was a pleasure listening to it from start to finish.
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- Tabitha
- 01-16-17
Gave me a direction for schooling!
it was highly entertaining, fascinating, easy to comprehend! gave me confidence to pursue my passion
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