Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Have gay relationships, that is. David McGillivray reports on the latest discoveries about animal homosexuality…
You may have read a recent news story about gay zebra finches. Apparently researchers at the University of California Berkeley discovered that “same-sex pairs of monogamous birds are just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with a member of the opposite sex.
” It was the latest in a series of reports about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. It seems we love to read about gay swans, gay ducks and especially gay penguins. But this ain’t news. Homosexuality in animals and birds has been studied seriously for more than 200 years. Desmond (The Naked Ape) Morris first wrote about gay zebra finches in 1954!
This accumulated knowledge is the biggest slap in the face to religious cranks who maintain that homosexuality is a human abnormality, unknown among other species. One of the most powerful homophobes in the UK, Baroness Young used her Christian beliefs to delay the passage of gay rights legislation.
Just before her eagerly anticipated death in 2002, she was daft enough to agree to an interview with Scott Capurro, presenter of a Channel 4 documentary The Truth About Gay Animals. Capurro allowed the misguided old toff to have her say. Then he showed her footage of gay animals shagging. She walked off the set. The truth about gay animals is that homosexuality has been documented in more than 450 species. And that figure is probably the tip of the iceberg.
The more we learn about the ways in which animals have sex, the more we learn about ourselves. It’s impossible to visit “Sexual Nature”, an exhibition at the Natural History Museum, without making this connection.
There’s no intelligent design malarkey here. Darwin is God and his statue overlooks everything. Visitors to Sexual Nature are reminded to leave moral preconceptions at the door. A lot of animal sex involves what we’d define as violence and rape.
The exhibition describes why it’s necessary for survival. Among the tutors is actress Isabella Rossellini who in a series of short videos dresses up as various beasties and has sex. As well as being instructive, these films are also very funny. There’s an appropriately cheeky atmosphere throughout the exhibition. You get to sniff animals’ pheromones (the jaguar’s is quite nice) and the hedgehog is described as a “spiky sexpot.”
“Animal homosexuality isn’t all about shagging. Sometimes same-sex pairs just like to flirt and snog. Or they mate to bring up orphaned offspring.”
All aspects of animal sexuality are covered and this means there’s a section on gay behaviour. It left me wondering – what’s the point of homosexuality? Present company excepted naturally. Gay men spend lots of money and help the world go around.
But why hasn’t evolution got rid of gay animals that don’t procreate? This is a big question that isn’t easy to answer. There’s not enough space in the exhibition and in his wonderful book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, biologist Bruce Bagemihl takes 751 pages to explain.
This is the book, states the flyleaf, “that definitively crushes the argument that homosexuality is not natural.” Indeed it does. The evidence is overwhelming. Everyone knows about the bonobo, our favourite animal role model.
This sex-mad, pygmy chimpanzee has sex throughout the day, every day, and for between 40 to 50 per cent of the time it’s not just gay sex but gay sex that’s unbelievably similar to our own. (Check out the photo in the book of a young male bonobo looking down approvingly as his older boyfriend gives him a hand job).
It also tells us about the gay sex lives of killer whales, giraffes, elephants, bats, flamingos and inevitably penguins. Just like us, animal homosexuality isn’t all about shagging. Sometimes same-sex pairs just like to flirt and snog. Or they mate to bring up orphaned offspring.
Bagemihl reveals the way in which animal homosexuality has been recorded down the years. Reports have invariably reflected the moral standards of the times in which they were written. Until very recently gay animal sex was “deviant” or “perverted.”
As recently as 1987 an author writing about gay butterflies in Morocco headed his piece, “A note on the apparent lowering of moral standards in the Lepidoptera.” As Bagemihl comments, “Declining moral standards – in butterflies?!”
Refuting all this nonsense, Bagemihl is as intrigued as I am as to why evolution hasn’t bred out sexual behaviour not intended to result in reproduction. Why is it still so prevalent, passed on from generation to generation? This is a complex matter and I don’t mean to be flippant, but the bottom line is that, whether we’re grizzly bears or muscle bears, we have gay sex because it makes us feel good.
Images copyright Natural History Museum
Sexual Nature is at the Natural History Museum, from 10am to 5.50pm daily, until 2nd October. Biological Diversity is out of print but copies are available on Amazon.
