Research: can animals be gay?

According to Darwin, the sexual impulses of animals are designed to cause reproduction, and are therefore necessarily heterosexual. But new research suggests homosexual animals – often dismissed by biologists as the exceptions that prove the rule – may be more common than previously thought.

A study of an albatross colony at the University of Hawaii revealed that one third of the 'couples', who commit to each other for life, consist of two females.

After mating with males, the pairs of females nest with their 'wives' and incubate their eggs together. The exceptional trend had previously gone unnoticed because male and female albatrosses are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Some biologists claim 'gay' animal behaviour has been spotted in 1,500 different species, and reliably recorded in a third of these cases. According to research, about a fifth of captive king penguins are gay, while it is common for male black swans to raise cygnets as a couple – possibly to provide better protection. Male dung flies, meanwhile, appear to mate with other males with the aim of exhausting them and thereby reducing the competition for females. Behaviour that appears to be gay has been observed in giraffes, butterflies, koalas, dolphins, octopuses and sheep, to name but a few.

Petter Bockman, an expert on homosexuality in animals from the University of Oslo, told the Daily Mail: "If you ask: 'Can animals be gay?' the short answer is: 'Yes.' 'Gay' is a human word, however, so we prefer to use the word 'homosexual' for animals.

"Sexuality is not just about making babies, it is also about making the flock work. For some animals, homosexuality is normal flock behaviour."

Scientists are divided over the significance of such findings. Bruce Bahemihl, a gay biologist at the University of Wisconsin, said researchers assume animals are not gay because of a "heterosexual bias". Others argue that animals are programmed to be heterosexual in order to survive. Dr Antonio Pardo, professor of bioethics at the University of Navarre, Spain, said: "Homosexuality does not exist in animals.

"Nevertheless, the interaction of other instincts, such as dominance, can result in behaviour that appears to be homosexual."

Professor Paul Harvey, head of zoology at the University of Oxford, said it is wrong to use examples of animals to support arguments over whether it is 'natural' to be gay.

He said: "It is a huge mistake to think studying homosexuality in animals gives us a greater understanding of human behaviour.

"If you want to know why humans are gay, ask a human."


/Telegraph.co.uk/