Contents:
- WHY IT'S OK FOR BIRDS TO BE GAY
- CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
- CAN BIRDS BE GAY? DO BIRDS SHOW HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVR?
- LBIAN ALBATROSS AND GAY GIRAFF? THE SCIENCE ON SAME-SEX SEXUALY ANIMALS
- IS MY BIRD GAY? INFORMATN ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL BIRDS AND PARROTS
WHY IT'S OK FOR BIRDS TO BE GAY
They're not alone: More than 130 bird speci are known to engage homosexual behavr at least ocsnally, a fact that has puzzled all, evolutnary terms same-sex matg seems to rce the birds' chanc of reproductive succs.
CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
In some speci the same-sex pairs even raise young (nceived wh outsi partners, obvly) and stay together for several 2007, a team led by Geoff MacFarlane, a blogist at the Universy of Newstle Atralia, reported that male homosexual behavr was more mon polygyno bird speci, where mal mate wh numero femal, and that female homosexual behavr was more mon monogamo speci. Srg sexTo fd out whether the theory might extend to homosexual behavr, MacFarlane and his team exhstively bed the lerature for acunts of same-sex urtship, mountg, or pair bondg. The balance shifted to femal socially monogamo speci, where the sex spl the work more far, female homosexualy hasn't turned up the handful of birds where each female mat wh many mal, but MacFarlane's team predicts may.
"Homosexual behavr is more likely to be mataed and not be selected agast than if you are a sex that r a lot for offsprg and only has one or few reproductive partners, " he wh plenty of reproductive prospects, a ltle homosexual behavr won't have much effect on long-term reproductive succs, MacFarlane said.
CAN BIRDS BE GAY? DO BIRDS SHOW HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVR?
"In some s, homosexual allianc may even be adaptive, helpg dividuals fend terrori, advance their social stat, or get help wh parental re. Wh most speci, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadilly, and there appear to be few s of dividual animals who engage exclively. ” But the journal that published the paper, Blogy Letters, sent out a prs release a few days after the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
In 1999, Bagemihl published “Blogil Exuberance, ” a book that pulled together a lossal amount of prev piecemeal rearch and showed how blogists’ bias had margalized animal homosexualy for the last 150 years — sometim nocently enough, sometim an eptn of anthropomorphic disgt. Given this big umbrella of theory, the very existence of homosexual behavr animals n feel a ltle like imperable nonsense, somethg a rearcher uld spend years bangg his or her head agast the wall liberatg.
LBIAN ALBATROSS AND GAY GIRAFF? THE SCIENCE ON SAME-SEX SEXUALY ANIMALS
The difficulty of that challenge, more than any implic or explic homophobia, may be why past blogists skirted the THE LAST DECADE, however, Pl Vasey and others have begun velopg new hypoth based on actual, prolonged observatn of different animals, cipherg the ways given homosexual behavrs may have evolved and the evolutnary role they might play wh the ntext of dividual speci.
So far, the only real ncln this relatively small body of lerature seems to pot to, llectively, is a kd of flatg, meta-ncln: a sgle explanatn of homosexual behavr animals may not be possible, bee thkg of “homosexual behavr animals” as a sgle scientific subject might not make much sense.
IS MY BIRD GAY? INFORMATN ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL BIRDS AND PARROTS
But we’re quick to nceive of that great range of activi the way most handily tracks to our anthropomorphic pot of view: put crassly, all those different animals jt seem to be dog gay sex stuff wh one another.