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.
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 ANIMALS BE GAY?
"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.
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.
CAN BIRDS BE GAY? DO BIRDS SHOW HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVR?
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.
LBIAN ALBATROSS AND GAY GIRAFF? THE SCIENCE ON SAME-SEX SEXUALY ANIMALS
”Somethg siar may be happeng wh what we perceive to be homosexual sex an array of animal speci: we may be groupg together a big grab bag of behavrs based on only a superficial siary. The Stanford blogist Joan Roughgarn told me to thk of all the animals as “multaskg” wh their private ’s also possible that some homosexual behavrs don’t provi a nventnal evolutnary advantage; but neher do they upend everythg we know about blogy.
Young found the assumptn offensive — not bee she was beg mistaken for gay, but bee she was beg mistaken for a bad scientist; the people seemed to prume that her rearch was promised by a personal agenda. Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual inti eher helped spur or mata their tert the topic; Bce Bagemihl argued that gay and lbian people are “often better equipped to tect heterosexist bias when vtigatg the subject simply bee we enunter so equently our everyday liv.
” He is gay, he add, but that fact didn’t seem to tract om his RETROSPECT, the big, sloshg stew of anthropomorphic analys that Young’s paper provoked the culture uldn’t have been ls surprisg.
IS MY BIRD GAY? INFORMATN ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL BIRDS AND PARROTS
For whatever reason, we’re prone to seeg animals — pecially animals that appear to be gay — as reflectns, mols and foils of ourselv; we’re extraordarily, and sometim irratnally, vted a few months before I vised Kaena Pot, two pengus at the San Francis Zoo beme the latt a tradn of ptive same-sex pengu upl makg global headl.
And while he strsed that there is no scientific way of termg if animals are “gay, ” bee the word nnot a sexual orientatn, not jt a behavr, he also noted that, beg the San Francis Zoo, “there’s fely a lot of opn here, ternally, that we give and ll the pengus gay. ” Acrdg to the Amerin Library Associatn, there have been more requts for librari to ban “And Tango Mak Three” every year than any other book the untry, three years animals do — what’s perceived to be “natural” — seems to rry a strange moral potency: ’s out there, irrefutably, as eher a validatn or a nunciatn of our own behavr, pendg on how you happen to feel about homosexualy and about nature.
Durg the Victorian era, observatns of same-sex behavr swans and sects were held up as evince agast the moraly of homosexualy humans, sce at the dawn of dtrialism and Darwism, people were vted seeg themselv as more civilized than the “lower animals.