Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Magpies, and Pied Kingfishers, among others.⁶⁷ Scientists studying same-sex pairs of Black-headed Gulls in captivity asserted in 1985 that this behavior had yet to be seen in this species in the wild—apparently unaware of a description of a male homosexual pair in wild Black-headed Gulls published in a Russian zoology journal just a year earlier. And researchers who discovered same-sex matings in Adelie and Humboldt Penguins and in Kestrels stated that they did not know of any comparable phenomena in other species of penguins or birds of prey, when in fact homosexual activity in King Penguins, Gentoo Penguins, and Griffon Vultures had previously been reported in the literature.⁶⁸

Sadly, omission and misinformation on the subject of animal homosexuality have ramifications far beyond the individual scientific articles in which they occur. Reference works such as those mentioned above are frequently consulted by researchers in other fields, and they are also the source of much of the information on animal behavior that is presented to the general public. As the quote at the beginning of this subsection indicates, the cycle is also perpetuated through each new generation of scientists as the textbooks they use (or the professors who instruct them) continue to offer inaccurate or incomplete information on the subject (when they aren’t completely silent on the topic). It is no surprise, then, that many scientists—and, by extension, most nonscientists—continue to harbor the erroneous impression that homosexuality does not exist in animals or is at best an isolated and anomalous phenomenon. When erasure and silence surround the subject among zoologists, misinformation and prejudice readily fill in the gaps—both in the scientific community and beyond.

To conclude this examination of homophobic attitudes in the scientific establishment, one simple observation can be made: given the considerable obstacles encountered in the recording, analysis, and discussion of the subject, it is remarkable that any descriptions of animal homosexuality make it to the pages of scientific journals and monographs (or to a wider audience). A great deal of progress is being made, and the situation today is certainly improved over that of even a decade ago. Moreover, none of this discourse would even be possible without the invaluable work of zoologists and wildlife biologists who study animals firsthand and report their findings—however flawed that study and reporting may be at times. Nevertheless, the examples of animal homosexuality currently contained in the zoological literature represent only the tip of the iceberg. Many more remain to be discovered, recorded, and granted the scientific attention that has so repeatedly been denied them in the past.

Anything but Sex

As we have seen, one way that zoologists have tried to avoid classifying same-sex activity as “homosexuality” is by using terminology and behavioral categories that deny it is sexual activity at all. This approach also extends to the interpretations, explanations, and “functions” attributed to same-sex behavior, even when it involves the most overt and explicit of activities. Astounding as it sounds, a number of scientists have actually argued that when a female Bonobo wraps her legs around another female, rubbing her own clitoris against her partner’s while emitting screams of enjoyment, this is actually “greeting” behavior, or “appeasement” behavior, or “reassurance” behavior, or “reconciliation” behavior, or “tension-regulation” behavior, or “social bonding” behavior, or “food exchange” behavior—almost anything, it seems, besides pleasurable sexual behavior. ⁶⁹ Similar “interpretations” have been proposed for many other species (involving both males and females), allowing scientists to claim that these animals do not really engage in “genuine” (i.e., purely sexual) homosexual activity. But what heterosexual activity is ever “purely” sexual?

Two female Bonobos participating in “GG (genito-genital) rubbing”

Most biologists are not as candid as Valerius Geist, who, in Mountain Sheep and Man in the Northern Wilds, readily admits to his discomfort and homophobia in trying to “explain” homosexuality in Bighorn Rams as “aggressive” or “dominance” behavior:

I still cringe at the memory of seeing old D-ram mount S-ram repeatedly … . True to form, and incapable of absorbing this realization at once, I called these actions of the rams aggressosexual behavior, for to state that the males had evolved a homosexual society was emotionally beyond me. To conceive of those magnificent beasts as “queers”—Oh God! I argued for two years that, in [wild mountain] sheep, aggressive and sexual behavior could not be separated … . I never published that drivel and am glad of it … . Eventually I called the spade a spade and admitted that rams lived in essentially a homosexual society.⁷⁰

This section will examine a number of nonsexual interpretations, including attempts to classify homosexuality as dominance or aggressive behavior, as a form of play, as a social interaction that relieves group tension, and as a greeting activity. In many cases, these “explanations” are not so much genuine attempts to understand the phenomenon as they are ways of denying its existence in the first place. Often these interpretations are simply incompatible with the facts, especially where “dominance” is involved. Furthermore, while in many instances animal homosexuality does have components of all these (nonsexual) activity types, this does not cancel its sexual aspects. As Paul L. Vasey observes, “Just because a behavior which is sexual in form serves some social role or function doesn’t mean it cannot be simultaneously sexual.”⁷¹ Indeed, both animal and human heterosexualities also share aspects of these nonsexual functions without losing their classification as “sexual” activities.

The Dominant Paradigm

In many animal societies, individuals can be ranked with respect to each other on the basis of a number of factors—aggression, access to food or heterosexual mating opportunities, age and/or size, and so on. The resulting hierarchy of individuals and their interaction within this system is often subsumed under the term dominance. Many scientists have suggested that mounting and other sexual behaviors between animals of the same sex are not in fact sexual behavior at all, but rather express dominance relations between the two individuals. The usual interpretation is that the “dominant” partner mounts the “subordinate” one and thereby asserts or solidifies his or her ranking relative to that individual. This “explanation” of homosexual behavior is firmly entrenched within the scientific establishment: one of the earliest statements of this position is a 1914 description of same-sex mounting in Rhesus Macaques, and since then dominance factors have regularly been invoked in discussions of animal homosexuality.⁷² Most scientists have appealed to dominance as an explanation for animal homosexuality only in relation to the particular species (or at most, animal subgrouping) that they are studying—and sometimes only for one sex within that species—without regard for a broader range of considerations. Once the full panoply of animal types, behaviors, and forms of social organization is taken into account, however, it becomes quite clear that dominance has little, if any, explanatory power. While dominance may be relevant in a few specific cases, it cannot account for the full range of homosexual interactions found throughout the natural world. Moreover, even in particular instances where dominance seems to be important, mitigating factors usually render its influence suspect, if not irrelevant.

At the most basic level, dominance is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the occurrence of homosexual behavior in a species. Just because an animal has a dominance-based or ranked form of social organization does not mean that it exhibits homosexuality, and just because homosexual behavior occurs in a species does not mean that it has a dominance hierarchy. For example, many animals with dominance hierarchies have never been reported to engage in homosexual mounting. Dominance systems are found in “the vast majority of mammal species forming groups with any degree of social complexity”—most primates, seals, hoofed mammals, kangaroos, and rodents, for instance—yet only a fraction of these participate in same-sex mounting. Specific examples of birds with dominance hierarchies but no reported homosexuality include curlews, silvereyes, Harris’s sparrows, European jays, black-capped chickadees, marabou storks, white-crowned sparrows, and Steller’s jays.⁷³ Conversely, homosexuality is found in many animals that do not have a dominance hierarchy or in which the relative ranking of individuals plays only a minor role in their social system: for example, some populations of Gorillas, Savanna (Olive) Baboons, Bottlenose Dolphins, Mountain and Plains Zebras, Musk-oxen, Koalas, Buff-breasted Sandpipers, and Tree Swallows.⁷⁴

Often, the relevance of dominance to homosexuality contrasts sharply in two closely related species: Pukeko have a well-defined dominance hierarchy that some scientists believe impacts on the birds’ homosexual behavior,