The crease the number of visible gay and trans people is sometim treated as a cursy or a e for ncern by crics, but ’s not a surprise. It’s normal.
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HOW COMMON ARE GAY ANIMALS?
Over the past 20 years, a burst of rearch — driven part by a new generatn of scientists more acceptg of queerns — has shown signifint amounts of prevly unreported homosexual behavr throughout the animal kgdom, om flour beetl to gorillas. While few animals are exclively “gay” or “lbian, ” an extraordary number, appears, engage some form of same-sex relatns. Christian theologians have long poted to the absence of animal homosexualy as evince that humans oughtn’t to be dog , eher.
Thirteenth-century philosopher and prit Thomas Aquas argued that homosexual behavr humans is wrong precisely bee don’t occur between animals. Gee Murray Levick, the explorer who wrote about homosexual behavr Adélie pengus 1911, shield his observatns of pengu “pravy” om sual observers by rerdg them his field not g the Greek alphabet — and they were still cut om the official expedn reports. A proment mammalogist, Valeri Geist, uldn’t help but notice equent homosexual sex at his bighorn sheep field se the 1960s, but Geist avoid publishg those fdgs bee ma him “crge … to nceive of those magnificent beasts as ‘queers.
’ ” Years later he relented, wrg that he eventually “admted that the rams lived sentially a homosexual society. The fact that a bird populatn wh many bond femal sharg a few mal between them would have higher reproductive output led historian and ornhologist Jared Diamond to dryly wonr whether “further study of homosexually paired female birds may help clarify what, if anythg, mal are good for — an evolutnary sense, of urse.
CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
” In social animals, the logic go, absolute homosexualy would produce no offsprg, but absolute heterosexualy uld also be limg, as might make for an anism that is “poor at formg social allianc.
“The bisexual advantage mol, ” Savolaen nclus, “is perhaps the most nservative geic explanatn for the persistence of homosexual behavr. Therefore, aversn to homosexual sex would have had to specifilly arise over the history of life, which this team of rearchers fds unlikely, sce the opportuny st of same-sex sex is relatively low. ”As most any Homo sapiens will tell you, sex that don’t brg about offsprg n still be worthwhile.
The bonobo ap, for example, palize on the release of the bondg hormone oxytoc durg homosexual sex to strengthen the social allianc between femal.