Can animals be gay?

GAY ANIMALS: ALTERNATE LIFTYL THE WILD

* animal gay family *

More than 200 years later, rearch has moved past some of the taboos those early rearchers faced and shown that homosexualy is much more mon than prevly thought.

5 ANIMAL SPECI THAT ARE TOTALLY GAY

A dog who ma natnal headl this month after beg abandoned by his owners for beg “gay” has been adopted by a same-sex uple. * animal gay family *

Rearchers are now gog beyond jt observg though, wh rearchers at Imperial leadg the way unravellg how, and why, homosexualy is found across nature.

11 ANIMAL SPECI THAT PROVE BEG GAY IS NATURAL

This suggts that homosexual activy is not a recent human nstct, cultural or even evolutnary terms, but stead occurs along many branch on the tree of life. Female homosexualy has been well studied Japane maqu, but Clive's rearch would exame how homosexual behavur differs mal and across environments.

Rerdg homosexual behavur the wild and llectg blood sampl are the first steps for Clive; the next is sequencg DNA to search for nnectns between the behavur and geic markers.

GAY ANIMALS

This ia stemmed om a study showg a rrelatn between geic marker Xq28 and male homosexualy, although there were statistil uncertati about some of the fdgs. Then they n see what this should look like the real blogil and heredary factors of homosexualy are most certaly not tied to a sgle gene. The explanatns are not exclive of one another, and is likely that a batn of factors are important for the evolutn of homosexualy.

DOG ABANDONED FOR BEG 'GAY' IS ADOPTED BY SAME-SEX UPLE

Importantly, this will clu exploratn of homosexual partners the hope of unrstandg different mate-choice strategi reproductive and non-reproductive ntexts. Versluys says: "Homosexualy is still somethg that's not always well unrstood among the scientific muny and maybe even more poorly unrstood among the general populatn.

A GAY PENGU UPLE ADOPTED AN EGG A BERL ZOO

And spe the acknowledgement of how wispread homosexualy is nature, rearchers have to ntend wh a arth of rearch that should have been built up over s.

It is important to note that the same-sex soc-sexual behavr observed the study is distct om homosexual behavr bee s motivatn and purpose are social, said Jean-Baptiste Le, who studi primate behavr at the Universy of Lethbridge Canada and was not volved the new rearch.

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. 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.