Gay animals | Psychology Today

Contents:

• 11 ANIMAL SPECI THAT PROVE BEG GAY IS NATURAL
• CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
• GAY ANIMALS: ALTERNATE LIFTYL THE WILD
• CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?
• GAY ANIMALS

11 ANIMAL SPECI THAT PROVE BEG GAY IS NATURAL

Zoologists are disverg that homosexual and bisexual activy is not unknown wh the animal and Silo, two male chstrap pengus at New York's Central Park Zoo have been separable for six years now. Filmmakers recently went search of homosexual wild animals as part of a Natnal Geographic Ultimate Explorer documentary about the female's role the matg game. "Well, perhaps, a roundabout way, they are seekg mal, suggts primatologist Amy argu that female maqu may enhance their social posn through homosexual timacy which turn fluenc breedg succs.

Already, s of animal homosexualy have been ced succsful urt s brought agast stat like Texas, where gay sex was, until recently, scientists say we should be wary of referrg to animals when nsirg what's acceptable human society.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

For stance, fantici, as practiced by lns and many other animals, isn't somethg people, gay or straight, generally approve of HomosexualySo how far n we go g animals to help unrstand human homosexualy? "The bottom le is that anythg that happens other primat, and particularly other ap, is likely to have strong evolutnary ntuy wh what happens humans, " he says the bonobo's e of homosexual activy for social bondg is a possible example, addg, "One of the ma arguments for human homosexual behavr is that helps bond male groups together, particularly where a group of dividuals are pennt on each other, as they might be huntg or warfare. However, as Dunbar adms, there's a long way to go before the of homosexualy humans are fully said, "Nobody's really vtigated this issue thoroughly, bee 's so polilly sensive.

However, scientific quiry to such behavrs didn’t happen until relatively recently due to historilly pervasive, negative attus towards homosexualy humans.

GAY ANIMALS: ALTERNATE LIFTYL THE WILD

On the other hand, bee female maqu will reproduce wh mal throughout their lifetime regardls of their tert homosexual behavr, the end the relatnships do not acce any st to lifetime reproductn. *Note: We tentnally do not e terms such as “heterosexual” or “homosexual” to prevent any nflatn between human sexualy and nonhuman animal sexual behavrs. It’s been observed more than 1, 500 animal speci, om sects and other vertebrat, right up the evolutnary ladr to primat and the most part, we’re not sure why—what evolutnary advantage do homosexual uplg provi to dolphs (other than happier dolphs)?

What’s really unnatural is that so many people still assume animals adhere to the “moral” of a small number of humans—so if you happen to n to anyone like that, pot them to this list of the 11 most gay animals on Sergey Uryadnikov (Shutterstock)Bonobos, a speci of great ap native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are the hippi of the animal kgdom. In parison, female giraff only get by wh other femal about 1% of the Jaroslav Seker (Shutterstock)Both male and female lns have been observed exhibg homosexual behavr.

Sce funerary practic were so important to the ancient people, probably wasn’t an accint, and scientists speculate that uld have been bee he was gay or trans. 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.

CAN ANIMALS BE GAY?

For hundreds of years, turns out, we’ve been lookg at animal sex through too narrow a lens — wh signifint nsequenc for our beliefs about what unts as natural our own speci.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.” As for those scientists who did want to wre about same-sex sexual behavr animals, one optn was to uch the judgmental language ed for humans — as a 1922 study on baboons lled “Disturbanc of the Sexual Sense,” or a 1987 study of same-sex matg butterfli tled “A Note on the Apparent Lowerg of Moral Standards the Lepidoptera.”The mimizg of animal sexual diversy was not only about disfort.

GAY ANIMALS

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.”Evolutnary blogist Mouni Kota is a fan of Laysan albatross, for whom up to a third of the nts are female-female. “It’s a lot of power that we have, but our qut to fd accuraci prev rearch, we have to make sure we’re also beg humble enough to know that we’re not always gog to get the answer we want.”Recently, scientists have begun to take serly a theory that blogist Vcent Savolaen summariz as “bisexual advantage”: the ia that fluid sexualy has creased reproductn chanc over the history of life, makg bisexualy “an evolutnary optimum.” 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.” Better for an animal to exist away om the extrem, so won’t miss out on procreatg or on the social survival strategi that same-sex activy offers. “The bisexual advantage mol,” Savolaen nclus, “is perhaps the most nservative geic explanatn for the persistence of homosexual behavr.”This mol is supported by a 2019 paper om a group of young scholars that not that the earlit creatur wouldn’t have discrimated between sex, bee the earlit creatur didn’t have sex.

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. The bonobo ap, for example, palize on the release of the bondg hormone oxytoc durg homosexual sex to strengthen the social allianc between femal.