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Home > News > Science > Behavior/Humans

December 5th, 2006, 13:52 GMT · By Stefan Anitei

Nature's Homosexuality

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When we say homosexuality is against nature, this is the biggest nonsense.

If we peek on nature, we'll see animal gays arising from any corner...

Homosexuality as an unnatural phenomenon can now be rejected scientifically.

From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos (dwarf chimpanzee) that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles.

With more than 1,500 species displaying homosexuality, you can really have a chance to visualize the phenomenon!

And it has been confirmed from invertebrates (like crayfish and beetles) till the anthropoid (man like) apes.

The idea, however, is rarely discussed in the scientific community and is often dismissed as unnatural because it doesn't appear to benefit the larger cause of species continuation.

"I think to some extent people don't think it's important because we went through all this time period in sociobiology where
everything had to be tied to reproduction and reproductive success," said Linda Wolfe, who heads the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University.

"If it doesn't have [something to do] with reproduction it's not important."

However, species continuation may not always be the ultimate goal, as many animals, including humans, engage in sexual activities more than it's necessary for reproduction.

And as has been observed for tens of years that animals take drugs (see article bellow) and look for pleasure, why sex for pure pleasure would be so unnatural?

"You can make up all kinds of stories: Oh it's for dominance, it's for this, it's for that, but when it comes down to the bottom I think it's just for sexual pleasure," Wolfe told.

Conversely, some argue that homosexual sex could have a bigger natural cause than just pure ecstasy: namely evolutionary benefits.

Copulation could be used for alliance and protection among animals of the same sex.

In situations when a species is mostly bisexual, homosexual relationships permit an easier way to join a pack.

"In bonobos for instance, strict heterosexual individuals would not be able to make friends in the flock and thus never be able to breed," said Petter Bockman from University of Oslo.

"In some bird species that bond for life, homosexual pairs raise young. If they are females, a male may fertilize their eggs. If they are males, a solitary female may mate with them and deposit her eggs in their nest."

In Australian black swan, almost 25 % of the families are homosexual couples.
Male couples sometimes mate with a female just to get an offspring.

Once she lays the egg, they chase her away, hatch the egg, and raise a family on their own.

"Homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are artificial terms defined by human society.

"Many species are hermaphrodites," Bockman said.

Hermaphrodites have both male and female sex organs and hermaphrodites can be encountered even among fishes.

A lot of marine species have no sex life at all, but just squirt their eggs or semen into sea.

Some creatures even reproduce asexually, by dividing themselves into two organisms.

In many species of lizards, females clone themselves.

Animal homosexuality, like human homosexuality, is challenging and poorly understood and scientific world still looks with shame upon the subject.

Many researchers don't even want to be linked with this type of investigation.

"I've had primatologists offer to give me their data on homosexual behavior because they didn't want to publish it," Wolfe said.

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: Aaron on 15 Nov 2010, 22:55 UTC reply to this comment

Animals eat each other, too. Just saying. Since when do we look to animals to define acceptable human behavior?

Comment #1.1 by: Justin on 20 Nov 2010, 16:36 GMT

Since the beginning of time. Its called the natural law theory. Most of our moral and ethical rights have been derived from it.


Comment #2 by: Bree on 09 Feb 2011, 20:47 UTC reply to this comment

Some animals also eat their young or kill them. Should we use this "natural" behavior to justify such things in humans? This is the problem when trying to draw too many conclusions, comparing human beings to animals or other organisms in nature. We are not animals according to the word from the Creator of all, but made unique, to be caretakers of the natural world. But we are NOT animals.

Comment #2.1 by: MichelleNeptune on 04 Nov 2011, 20:50 GMT

Uhh, YES we are.... To deny this means that we play into this con that dictates how we are not. We are all human animals - we just happen to be the most intelligent. Also because of this fact, human leaders have wrought upon this earth some of the biggest atrocities against mankind. You can pick any one of them - the Holocaust, Islam, Communism, African Genocides, the list goes on and on and on...... So really, to try and argue that we are not animals and that we share a special affinity with God in which humans are above nature is pure illusion.

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