AG: So let’s talk about sex. What do you teach your students?
SB: I like to teach about things that push students to rethink our place in the natural world—what we have that's similar to other organisms and perhaps what about us that's different. Things that are provocative get them to think. Things that are unsolved. If I pick something that's controversial it shows how science works. If you can see the arguments in the process—and there's few things people like to argue about more than sex—then you see a little more about how science functions.
That comes down to everything from what is sex, biologically—which means just combining genetic info—to all the different ways evolution has created ways to get organisms to share genetic information. So that includes behavior, genitalia—and there's some weird behavior and even weirder genitalia. And that shows you the range of strategies used by life.
Weird genitalia, huh?
In most species there's more than two individuals involved. If males are competing with other males for sex, you have genitalia acting like scrapers, spatulas, siphons to remove the previous guy's ejaculation. So you get genitalia with phalanges, spikes. You've got cannibalism, where it's beneficial for the male to be eaten by the female because it makes it more likely his sperm will get used—there's pretty good evidence it does increase reproduction, and evolution is all about reproduction. It’s counterintuitive.
What kinds of animals are into cannibalism?
There’s the Australian red back spider, where the male has complicit cannibalism. The back end pumps sperm into the female while the front end gets eaten by the female; the male basically inserts his organ and basically does a somersault to place himself over the female's mouth parts so she can chew him. In this species it's so rare a male finds a female that once he finds her, it's beneficial to do anything he can to make sure she uses his sperm.
Wow, good to know. So how did you get involved in the sciences?
I’ve always been a student of the natural world. I was fascinated by the things I saw—and that’s how I got into evolution and sex; I was fascinated by what I saw around me and how it all functioned…. It’s phenomenal how organisms are put together.
Whenever I went fishing with my parents as a kid, not only did we fillet the fish, but talk about all the organs and what they did. Don’t ask me why. But everything we did became a science experiment. Which means I had to carry a lot of dead animals around as a child.
Did you find it difficult to break into the sciences as a woman?
I was foolish enough to think there was no sexism in sciences by the time I got into it in the 1980s. Having had conversations with my mother, who was deeply involved with the women's lib movement, I just didn’t expect it. I had my eyes deeply opened.
Is it still a problem?
It's just more subtle now. When a guy grad student goes to play racquetball with the director after work and then goes and has a beer with him and they get to talking about experiments, that’s hard for a female grad student to do. You get nervous about going out with a senior male alone. So you lose that whole collegiality that’s easier for males to develop.
You can try to be more proactive on lunches during the day—beer at night made me uncomfortable. You have to make your opportunities to talk to them; you have to go to their office to talk to them. You say, “I read your paper; let’s talk about it.” The burden is on you.
Are things improving, at least?
Sure, it's improving. But my status has changed, too, so as I get higher status it's easier for me to do things—time is passing in more than one way. You still hear the same complaints, valid complaints, from grad students being left out from fishing trips and basketball games—bonding experiences. It's not a completely level playing field, but a slow creep onward.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Harvard President Larry Summers’ comments on the differences between men and women in the sciences. What’s your gut reaction?
There were some comments in Time that resonated with me. There was a good article that said we should not use 80 hours a week as a criterion as a success; you should find the most talented person. Something is wrong with the system if you have to work 80 hours a week whether you're male or female.
Until we as a culture make it easier for men to take time off for children, we're going to have to choose between no family time and ratcheting it down. It is possible to do it all—I have colleagues who do—but it's really hard to do.
There’s a lot of talk lately that love is just a bunch of chemicals rather than anything special or human. What do you think? Are there parallels in other animals?
Well, is love an evolved state? I think the answer is yes. It depends on whether you're talking about romantic love or love of a parent for child. In both cases, love as we know it exists only in humans; it's really hard to do experiments about it in humans. One can only extrapolate from other organisms and try to use theories. It is congruent with evolutionary theory that you'd have a strong link with your sexual partner and offspring.
But the fact that I am hard-wired to love my children does not mean that it isn't a profound experience for me. You can think of it as an emergent property—something that began with a biological imperative but has been reinforced by culture to become something more sacred.
Okay, one more thing—do you still fish?
[laughing] My interest in anatomy ended after having to chop up a lot of hamsters in college—I got pretty unhappy killing vertebrates. That's why I switched to nematodes and fruit flies. At this point when my kids go fishing I'm probably the last one to want to pull the guts out.
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