Seed: The Gay Animal Kingdom

[unpossibles]

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php?page=all&p=y

Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a terrible mistake. Not about natural selection—she's no bible-toting creationist—but about his other great theory of evolution: sexual selection. According to Roughgarden, sexual selection can't explain the homosexuality that's been documented in over 450 different vertebrate species. This means that same-sex sexuality—long disparaged as a quirk of human culture—is a normal, and probably necessary, fact of life. By neglecting all those gay animals, she says, Darwin misunderstood the basic nature of heterosexuality.

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called "homosexual societies." They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males "effeminate."

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in "penis fencing," which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

As this list of activities suggests, having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia. You name it, there's a vertebrate out there that does it. Nevertheless, most biologists continue to regard homosexuality as a sexual outlier. According to evolutionary theory, being gay is little more than a maladaptive behavior.

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huh - and to think that there are 450 species of animals all going to Hell... </sarcasm>

also, as a photo editor, I have to say I am amused at the picture selection on this article. :D

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I got that article last week from a vet partners' group. Loved it, but

also know that it's true. I had 'gay' neutered hogs when I was about 14 years old. A pair of market pigs named John and Ringo, who were constantly together and did some pretty 'different' things! Now, I have two neutered American Eskimo dogs that I adopted together from a rescue group. The rescuer told me about their close relationship and how the two of them were kind of 'outcasts' to the other 6 or 7 Eskies she had. Again, they adore each other and look like they're twins!

[Kipling]

2. Sounds like they're bisexual.

I don't really believe that you can be born "gay" or "straight". Everyone has hetero and homo desires to varying degrees. Some societies bring these out more, like Ancient Greece or Feudal Japan where most people were bisexual.

[unpossibles]

4. I believe something very similar

although I think there are people who are (for the sake of argument) 99.9% straight or gay (I chuckled as I typed that...)

This is not to demean anyone's preferences, but to say that sexuality always struck me as a continuum more than a binary either/or thing. Hell, many really good friends of mine who are very happily gay have said to be at least interested if not occasionally having a crush on someone of the opposite sex, just as I know more than a few "curious" straight people who have done the same. Or the opposite. You know what I mean.

;)

Who knows. I say to each their own, as long as everyone involved is consenting, I don't really care who someone is attracted to.

[Brazenly Liberal]

3. We had a couple of gay roosters

Two white Leghorns named Roy G. Biv and RuPaul. They completely ignored the hens and spent all their time together. I know they tried to have sex, but I'm not sure they actually succeeded. Chicken anatomy being what it is and chicken sex being what it is (5 seconds of action - tops), it was hard to tell for sure. But their hearts were in it. When Roy G. Biv died, RuPaul was distraught and passed on a few months later.