Reading 24

“Opossums are amongst the animal kingdom’s most accomplished actors; their flair for playing dead has evolved into a multi-sensory performance that includes not only lying stone stiff for hours on end and frothing at the mouth but also emitting a green anal slime that positively reeks of death. In reality opossums don’t die easily – they are immune to pit viper venom, allowing them to dine on otherwise deadly snakes, and they also appear to be impervious to botulism and rabies.”

- Lucy Cooke, Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal (2022)

“Sexual cannibalism may have seemed perplexing to the blinkered vision of Victorian male biologists, but when viewed from the female’s standpoint there are clear evolutionary benefits to eating your lover before, during or after sex.”

- Lucy Cooke, Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal (2022)