The sex act is, admittedly, a major preoccupation for most humans. But consider the plight of the female stick insect whose mate has been copulating with her for ten weeks straight while all she wants is a good night's sleep, or the male praying mantis who risks his life every time he seeks to mate with a female mantis whose penchant for decapitation is infamous. Frankly, sex in the animal kingdom is as wild and diverse as the animals themselves. So, when you are a lusty Californian mouse who cannot seduce her neighbor mouse into cheating on his old, ugly wife, or a sagebrush cricket who has discovered some alarming teeth on his back, or a green spoon worm who has just inhaled her husband, who do you seek for answers to some of your more embarrassing questions? Not Dr. Ruth, or even Dan Savage. Evolutionary biologist and award-winning journalist Olivia Judson, in the guise of Dr. Tatiana, is the woman for the job. Familiar with every fickle commutation an insect or mammal can think up, Dr. Tatiana can answer everything you ever wanted to know about sex in the animal world. Disguised as a hilarious advice column, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is in fact an engrossing and educational overview of evolutionary biology. Be prepared to be quite astonished — and very amused. Georgie, Powells.com

"Delightful . . . Easy to understand and hard to resist, it's sex education at its prime-accurate, comprehensive, and hilarious." -Newsweek

An uproarious and authoritative natural history in the form of letters to and answers from the preeminent sexpert in all creation, this bestselling guidebook to sex reveals, for example, when necrophilia is acceptable, how to have a virgin birth, and when to eat your lover. It also advises on more mundane matters-such as male pregnancy and the joys of a detachable penis. At once entertaining and wise, Dr. Tatiana (a.k.a. Olivia Judson) fuses natural history with advice to the lovelorn, blends wit and rigor, and reassures her anxious correspondents that although the acts they describe might sound appalling and unnatural, they are all perfectly normal-so long as you are not a human. In the process, she explains the science behind it all, from Darwin's theory of sexual selection to why sexual reproduction exists at all. By applying human standards to the natural world, in the end she reveals the wonders of both.

From Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation:

Dear Dr. Tatiana, I'm a European praying mantis, and I've noticed I enjoy sex more if I bite my lovers' heads off first. Somehow they then seem less inhibited, more urgent — it's fabulous. Do you find this too?
I Like 'Em Headless in Lisbon

Some of my best friends are man-eaters, but between you and me, cannibalism isn't my bag. I can see why you like it, though. Males of your species are boring lovers. Beheading them works wonders: whereas a headless chicken rushes wildly about, a headless mantis thrashes in a sexual frenzy. Why can't he be that way when he's whole?

An uproarious and authoritative natural history in the form of letters to and answers from the preeminent sexpert in all creation, this bestselling guidebook to sex reveals, for example, when necrophilia is acceptable, how to have a virgin birth, and when to eat your lover.