Can Animals Really Be Gay? | Popular Science

can dolphins be gay

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MORE GAY DOLPHS OBSERVED OFF COAST OF WTERN ATRALIA

Homosexual behavr the animal kgdom is rife. They recently observed big groups of dolphs engagg what appeared to be homosexual behavr.

"Apart om homosexual behavr, mal, unlike femal, Shark Bay have also been rerd to perform synchrono displays, " she said. Nicholson add that homosexual behavr appears to play a role the velopment of social bonds between mal, helpg them to tablish domance and Mann, who has studied dolphs at Shark Bay for s, says another possible reason is for mal to practice matg. In the book Homosexual Behavur Animals: An Evolutnary Perspective, she wrote: "Homosexual teractns bottlenose to serve multiple functns, although the exact fns nsequenc, if any, are unknown.

Wh most speci, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadilly, and there appear to be few s of dividual animals who engage exclively. “This lony is lerally the largt proportn of — I don’t know what the rrect term is: ‘homosexual animals’?

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

” 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.

A Denver-based publitn for gay parents weled any and all new rears om “the extensive lbian albatross parent muny.

” A gay rights advote e-mailed Young, askg her to fly a rabow flag above each female-female nt, to intify them and show solidary.

FLIPPER CLEARED! DOLPHS ARE NOT GAY OR BISEXUAL RAPISTS AFTER ALL

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. ” Homosexual sex between ostrich was terpreted by one scientist as “a nuisance” that “go on and on. Homosexualy is a tough se, bee appears to vlate that central te, that all of sexual behavr is about reproductn.

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.

My take on is that homosexual behavr is not a uniform phenomenon.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

But that shouldn’t trick to thkg that homosexual behavr has some equivalent, anizg purpose — that the two are tidy oppos.

GAY DOLPHS AND MP ORS, HOMOSEXUALY MARE MAMMALS IS A FACT!

“All this homosexual behavr isn’t tied together by that sort of primary functn, ” Vasey said. 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. ”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. As Z put , “There’s a lot of slop the system — which, ” she was sure to add, “is not the same as sayg homosexualy is a mistake. Homosexual activy is often observed animal populatns wh a shortage of one sex — the wild but more equently at zoos.

CAN A DOLPH BE GAY

She’s not tryg to expla homosexual behavr.

Young’s hband, a blogil nsultant, was actually an thor of the paper, along wh Brenda Zn (who is also not gay, for what ’s worth). 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. Still, some of the blogists dog the most cisive work on animal homosexualy are fact gay.

CAN ANIMALS REALLY BE GAY?

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.

” Wh a lgh, Pl Vasey told me, “People tomatilly assume I’m gay. ” 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.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* CAN DOLPHINS BE GAY

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