Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

to “horse,” while cows are said to “bull.” Same-sex activity is often utilized, paradoxically, in breeding programs. In some species homosexual mounting among females is used as a reliable indicator of when they are in heat, while young bulls or steers (known as teasers) are often presented to mature bulls to arouse them and allow their semen to be collected (for later use in artificial insemination) .⁸³

For each domesticated species that exhibits homosexual behavior, there are one or more wild “relatives” in which homosexuality has also been observed: Lions and other wild Cats, Wolves and other wild Dogs, Cavies (the wild ancestors of Guinea Pigs), American Bison and other wild Buffalo, Bighorn Sheep and other wild Sheep and Goat species, Zebra and other wild Horses, and so on. In some cases, the same-sex activities observed in domesticated species and their wild ancestors exhibit striking similarities: the group sexual interactions or “huddles” of Goats and Sheep (both wild and domesticated), the frequency of same-sex mounting in domestic Cattle and wild Buffalo, female Cats and Lions placing themselves underneath a female partner to invite mounting, or the same-sex courtship displays by female Turkeys and wild Sage Grouse. In other cases, there are equally striking dissimilarities: pair-bonding and mounting among domesticated boars, for instance, contrasted with the virtual absence of same-sex activity in male wild Pigs; or fairly extensive homosexual courtship activities in female Cheetahs, contrasted with little, if any, such courtship activities in domestic Cats.

Although scientifically verified, homosexuality in pets and other domesticated animals continues to evoke many meanings for the people who simply live or work with such creatures, independent of the “facts.” As with all human observations of the animal world, people tend to see only what they are prepared to accept. This is illustrated quite clearly in two contrasting views of homosexual behavior in farm animals, symbolizing the contradictory interpretations of same-sex activity that are applied to both people and animals. Anita Bryant, in a particularly brilliant turn of logic, once asserted that “even barnyard animals don’t do what homosexuals do.” When informed that barnyard animals and many wild species actually do “stoop” to the level of human homosexuals, she retorted, “That still doesn’t make it right.”⁸⁴ Not surprisingly, noted lesbian author and historian Lillian Faderman offers a markedly different view:

It’s ridiculous for people not to recognize it [homosexuality] in nature. My partner once had a ranch, and I was just fascinated with the way the female animals would often mount other female animals as well as be mounted … . Mammals are simply sexual.⁸⁵

Each of these women has strong opinions about animal homosexuality, and each woman’s viewpoint is informed by her feelings about homosexuality in people. Of the two, however, Lillian Faderman’s perspective is closer to the scientific reality of homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The next chapter explores in more detail the way that people have interpreted animal homosexuality throughout the history of science. Unfortunately, biologists themselves have often espoused views that have more in common with Anita Bryant’s than Lillian Faderman’s.

Chapter 3

Two Hundred Years of Looking at Homosexual Wildlife

1764: … three or four of the young [Bantam] cocks remaining where they could have no communication with hens … each endeavoured to tread his fellow, though none of them seemed willing to be trodden. Reflection on this odd circumstance hinted to me, why the natural appetites, in some of our own species, are diverted into wrong channels.

—GEORGE EDWARDS,

Gleanings of Natural History

1964: Another example of an irreversible sexual abnormality concerns an orang-utan. This ape, a young male, was kept with another young male and they spent a great deal of time playing together. This included some sex play and anal intercourse was observed on a number of occasions.

—DESMOND MORRIS, “The Response of

Animals to a Restricted Environment”

1994: There are several explanations for homosexual behavior in non-human animals. First, it is possible that the pursuers misidentified male 42 as a female because the plumage of after-second-year female Tree Swallows resembles that of males …

—MICHAEL LOMBARDO et al., “Homosexual

Copulations by Male Tree Swallows”¹

Animal homosexuality is by no means a “new” discovery by modern science. Some of the earliest statements regarding homosexual behavior in animals date back to ancient Greece, while the first detailed scientific studies of same-sex behavior were made in the 1700s and 1800s. From the very beginning, descriptions of homosexuality in animals were accompanied by attempts to interpret or explain its occurrence, and observers who witnessed the behavior were almost invariably puzzled, astonished, and even upset by the simple fact of its existence. As the quotes above illustrate, many of these same attitudes have continued to this day. With more than 200 years of scientific attention devoted to the subject, how is it that so many people today—many scientists included—are unaware of the full extent and characteristics of animal homosexuality, and/or continue to be puzzled by its occurrence? This chapter seeks to answer this question, first by chronicling the history of the study of homosexuality in animals, and then by documenting the systematic omissions and negative attitudes of many zoologists in dealing with this phenomenon. As we will see, a history of the scientific study of animal homosexuality is necessarily also a history of human attitudes toward homosexuality.

A Brief History of the Study of Animal Homosexuality

The history of animal homosexuality in Western scientific thought begins with the early speculations of Aristotle and the Egyptian scholar Horapollo on “hermaphroditism” in hyenas, homosexuality in partridges, and variant genders and sexualities in several other species.² Although much of their thinking was infused with mythology and anthropomorphism, and there are notable inaccuracies in their observations (the Spotted Hyena, for example, is not hermaphroditic), the discussions of these scholars represent the first recorded thoughts on homosexuality and transgender in animals. The earliest scientific observations of animal homosexuality are those of the noted French naturalist (and count) Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, whose monumental fifteen-volume Histoire naturelle generale et particuliere (1749—67) includes observations of same-sex behavior in birds. Additional observations on homosexuality in birds were made in the eighteenth century by the British biologist George Edwards, and (as indicated above) they also include some of the first pronouncements about the supposed “causes” and “abnormality” of such behavior.³

The beginning of the modern study of animal homosexuality was heralded by a number of early descriptions of same-sex behavior in insects (e.g., by Alexandre Laboulmene in 1859 and Henri Gadeau de Kerville in 1896), small mammals (e.g., by R. Rollinat and E. Trouessart on Bats in 1895), and birds (e.g., by J. Whitaker on Swans in 1885 and Edward Selous on Ruffs in 1906), while the German scientist Ferdinand Karsch offered, in the year 1900, one of the first general surveys of the phenomenon. ⁴ Since then, the scientific study of animal homosexuality has expanded enormously to include a wide variety of investigations, reported in close to 600 scientific articles, monographs, dissertations, technical reports, and other publications in over ten different languages. These range from field observations of animals that only anecdotally mention homosexual behavior, to more extensive descriptions of homosexuality in a wide range of species studied in the wild, to observations of captive animals (including at many zoos and aquariums throughout the world), to experiments on laboratory animals, to more recent studies devoted to examining all aspects of homosexual behavior in a particular species (often in the wild), to more comprehensive general surveys of the phenomenon. Some reports have received wide