Homosexuality in animal behaviour
Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective
Homosexuality is an evolutionary paradox in search for a resolution, not a medical condition in search for a cure. Homosexual conduct is common among social animals, and mainly expressed within the context of a bisexual sexual orientation. Exclusive homosexuality is less familiar, but not unusual to humans. Poiani and Dixson summon the reader to embark on a journey through the evolutionary, biological, psychological and sociological aspects of homosexuality, searching an understanding of both the proximate and evolutionary causes of homosexual deed and orientation in humans, other mammals and birds. The authors also provide a synthesis of what we perceive about homosexuality into a biosocial model that links recent advances in reproductive skew theory and various selection mechanisms to produce a comprehensive framework that will be useful for anyone training or planning future research in this field.
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New Science on Same-sex Habit in Wildlife
In honor of Pride Month, we are taking the opportunity to look at same-sex sexual relationships in wildlife—from sea stars and birds, to monkeys and apes. Thanks to a cultural change toward inclusivity over the last several decades, there has never been a better time to honor diversity in all its forms.
Scientists have long recognizable that animals engage in sexual behavior with individuals of the same sex. In fact, such queer sexual behavior had been documented in wildlife as early as the s. However, scientific inquiry into such behaviors didn’t take place until relatively recently due to historically pervasive, negative attitudes towards homosexuality in humans.
Some years later, these research taboos are tediously breaking down. Over the years, scientists have discovered more than 1, species of wildlife that employ in some form of same-sex sexual behavior. These behaviors are found in all major groups of animals, including birds, reptiles, fish, arthropods, mollusks, and of course, mammals—including humans. But where do such behaviors ev
Scientists explore the evolution of animal homosexuality
Imperial researchers are using a new approach to understand why queer behaviour is so ordinary across the animal kingdom.
Read this article in our new Imperial Stories immersive digital storytelling platform!
In , a team of scientists set off on the Terra Nova Expedition to explore Antarctica. Among them was George Murray Levick, a zoologist and photographer who would be the first researcher to learn the world's largest Adélie penguin colony. He chronicled the animals' daily activities in great detail.
In his notebooks, he described their sexual behaviour, including sex between male birds. However, none of these notes would appear in Levick's published papers. Concerned by the graphic content, he only printed copies of Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin to circulate privately. The last remaining copy was recently unearthed providing valuable insights into animal homosexuality research.
But forays into animal homosexuality study long predate Levick, with observations published as far back as the s
Homosexual behavior is much more familiar across the animal kingdom than we first thought, new investigate has found.
Scientists found that 78 percent of animal behavior experts had seen some degree of same-sex sexual behavior in animals during their research, according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Previous research has established that homosexuality has been observed in over 1, species of animals from all walks of life, ranging from tiny insects to other primates.
"Same-sex sexual behaviour (SSSB) occurs in most animal clades and is defined as the act of engaging in sexual behaviours, such as mounting, intromission, and genital-oral or manual-genital contact with members of the same sex," the researchers wrote in the new paper.
"SSSB has been a focus of study in some primate and ungulate species (e.g., in deer (Cervus spp.); American bison (Bison bison); Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)) yet has remained a small research priority in the field of evolutionary biology."
In the sheet, the researchers describe how they surveyed 65 animal behavior experts who had ob