Lucy Cooke
Lucy Cooke is a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning documentary filmmaker with a Masters in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was tutored by Richard Dawkins. She began her career working behind the scenes in television comedy before moving into directing documentaries. She has now become a familiar face on natural history TV, having presented prime time series for BBC, ITV and National Geographic. She’s a regular on Radio 4, frequently guesting on Infinite Monkey Cage and Sue Perkin’s Nature Table as well as hosting her own The Power of… series. Lucy has written for the Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Her first book, A Little Book of Sloth, was a New York Times bestseller and featured Lucy’s photographs of her favourite animal (she also founded the Sloth Appreciation Society). The Unexpected Truth about Animals, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and has been translated into 17 languages. Her latest book B*TCH: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal is published in the UK by Transworld in March 2022, and she writes a monthly column in BBC Wildlife on the Female of the Species, covering a range of wildlife including meerkats, orcas and banded mongooses.
Meet the female carnivore with no vagina but a clitoris the size of a milk bottle
12 weirdest insects in the world - including a moth that resembles a poodle and a fly with eyes on stalks
“They parasitise their sexually reproducing cousins’ sperm for their own purposes”: Meet the self-replicating sisterhood
It hasn’t had sex in 80 million years and extracts DNA from what it eats – meet this indestructible ‘Frankenstein’ creature
This 'karaoke queen' uses its song to fend off rival mates from vicious nest vandalism
Nature’s most devoted mother starves herself for an epic 4 years – so her babies get the best start – with devastating consequences
There’s a parasitic ‘Alien’-like wasp that bursts out of its bug host – and it could save modern crop farming
The planet’s ultimate supermom can produce 146 million offspring – squeezing out a fresh egg every few seconds
It vomits up blood and urinates while feeding so it doesn’t explode – meet this bloodthirsty beast
It lays luminous eggs on the jungle floor and then abandons them with the father – is this nature’s worst mother?
Kick-ass female zebra saves foal from infanticidal male
Why do lions take so many sexual partners?
Meet the world's most murderous mammal: the meerkat
The secret behind the female ecelctus parrot's flamboyant plumage
Sage grouse 'beatbox' to attract a mate
Bonnethead sharks: the shark that gives birth without having sex
How black-and-white ruffed lemurs rely on communal help in bringing up their young
Banded mongoose guide: where they live, what they eat and why females start fights with rival gangs
Naked mole rat: what they are and how the queen rules the colony
Hawaii's 'lesbian' albatrosses
Darwin's bark spider: meet the spider that eats her sexual partner
The chimpanzees that eat bush babies
Why promiscuity pays off for female dunnocks
