Scientific research into animal behaviour still rests on many deeply ingrained assumptions about what is deemed to be “natural” human behaviour. For example, men—males—are assumed by nature to be more dominant and aggressive than women—females. And if men are violent, then the violent behaviour of other male animals in the wild can supposedly be explained by a universal need for domination and displays of aggression. Aggressiveness, understood in this way, would—precisely because of its biological basis—have nothing to do with upbringing or social environment.

But what happens when such self-evident social explanations become the foundation for interpreting the behaviour of other animals? Authors Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer in Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behaviour link the study of behavioural biology with interpretations of the human world. The book, published by The MIT Press in the spring of this year, lays bare how entrenched human biases infiltrate the sciences.

Scientific interpretations of animal behaviour have historically been entangled with eugenics, racism, and colonial politics.

One example of bias described in the book concerns research into the harmful effects of chemicals, such as the herbicide atrazine, on frogs. These substances were thought to disrupt sexual development. Exposed frogs were reported to change sex, and males were repeatedly observed engaging in sexual activity with other males. Any behaviour deviating from familiar conventions was interpreted as the result of toxic chemicals in the environment.

Only when researchers followed the entire developmental cycle of these frogs in detail did they find that American green frogs naturally undergo sex changes during their development from tadpoles to adults, with temperature playing the decisive role. In some cases, adult frogs possessed functional organs of both sexes and were able to reproduce. This was unexpected, since intersex animals were assumed to be subordinate/inferior and less reproductively successful than those without such variations. It was only through this more open approach that researchers were able to perceive the full diversity concealed in nature. Without receptivity to alternative perspectives, scientific inquiry risks seeking answers in entirely the wrong places.

We perceive the world as though what we know is all that can be known. Too often, we mistake our own limits for universal ones.

Ambika Kamath is a behavioural ecologist and evolutionary biologist. Melina Packer is an assistant professor of race, gender, and sexuality studies and a scholar of feminist science studies. Together, they form a compelling combination, presenting both the intricacies of biological processes and embedding them in humanistic and social scientific debates. Their book demonstrates effectively that scientific work is never bias-free. Not only does science shape society, but society—through the contexts in which we live and grow up—shapes which research questions we even think to ask, which methods we adopt, and how we interpret our results. The ways in which we observe behaviours and the language we use to describe them are subordinate to our first, naturalized interpretations/perspectives. It becomes difficult to imagine research that might contradict such initial assumptions. Yet precisely this—an openness to an alternative approach contradiction—is at the heart of the scientific method. Science seeks the most adequate explanations, even when they challenge our previous ones.

The authors advocate for what Sandra Harding has called “strong objectivity,” an approach that acknowledges the inevitable partiality of all perspectives. This awareness of limited objectivity, they argue, enables us to formulate better questions and to reach more comprehensive answers.

Consider the example of aggression among animals. Kamath and Packer discuss Coho salmon spawning. The traditional explanation focuses on large, strong males who appear most successful at accessing females. But that is only part of the story. They highlight the existence of smaller, sneaker males who avoid direct combat yet succeed in fertilizing eggs by employing different, equally effective strategies. This perspective does not deny aggression but situates it within a broader context, showing that nature accommodates multiple routes to success beyond brute force.

The book does not stop with salmon. Across seven chapters, the authors move from territorial lizards to bird species in which parental roles are reversed, and to cooperative courtship among primates. In each case, they systematically dismantle entrenched ideas about what is “natural.”

To reinforce their critique of naturalized explanations, the authors employ the concept of Umwelt—the inaccessible sensory and perceptual worlds of other animals. Drawing on science journalist Ed Yong, they stress that our Umwelt is limited, even if it does not seem so to us. We perceive the world as though what we know is all that can be known. Too often, we mistake our own limits for universal ones. Humans will never know what it is like to be a fruit fly capable of perceiving thermal gradients in the air. Its flight may seem random to us, but the fly is actively navigating according to invisible contours of warm and cool currents.

The concept of Umwelt directs us to search for and foreground diverse perceptual worlds. Yet this was not always the case. Jakob von Uexküll, the very originator of the term, was a Nazi sympathizer and drew from Umwelt conclusions that reinforced hierarchical and exclusionary politics—such as claiming that only an aristocratic elite could be true scientists. Kamath and Packer show, however, how Umwelt can be re-appropriated in emancipatory ways, while insisting that there are no shortcuts in science: every scientific idea must be read in its political context before being re-used. In Feminism in the Wild, they remind us that scientific interpretations of animal behaviour have historically been entangled with eugenics, racism, and colonial politics.

They also interrogate the limits of adaptationism, the reduction of evolutionary explanations to optimal adaptation. They criticize the ideal of organisms as perfectly tuned decision-makers and behaviourists, showing instead how traits often evolve “well enough” to function within an environment. Kamath, for instance, describes her observations of tent caterpillars that alter their environment by feeding on leaves and building communal silk shelters. Such complex entanglements raise questions about how to frame adaptation when organisms both change and are changed by their environments.

The authors further argue that the optimality thinking—the search for the most efficient survival strategies—is inseparable from capitalist worldviews. As an alternative, inspired by ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, they propose an “abundance economy.” Within such a framework, same-sex behaviours, for example, no longer appear as paradoxes requiring evolutionary justification, but instead as integral aspects of relational diversity in nature. The book also addresses human contexts, pointing to ableism and restrictive definitions of gender, often reinforced by scientific authority, which serve repressive and exclusionary politics.

The central concept that Kamath and Packer develop throughout the book emphasizes the relational co-constitution of organisms and their environments. Organisms are neither passive products of genes nor environments; they exist in dynamic relation with the world, actively shaping both themselves and the conditions around them.

The reviewer did not expect, when taking Feminism in the Wild on holiday in early July, to encounter a book so closely aligned with her own ways of thinking and researching within biology. The book offers imagination, unpredictability, and explanatory power that often surpass the constraints of conventional perspectives. It stands as an excellent introduction to critical reflection in behavioural biology, while also providing deeper insight into the workings of science and the production of knowledge itself.

Dr. Zarja Muršič

The article was first published on August 20, 2025, on Radio Študent, Ljubljana, Slovenia.