Homosexuality: Not Strictly for the Birds

The general school of thought among the Darwinian science types has been that evolution turns a species, over time, into lean, mean procreating machines with a single goal: preservation by reproduction. And inherent in such a theory is an across the board presumption that when a pair of whatevers — mammals, fish, insects — get together to raise a brood, those pairings are always male-female. Well, not so fast, folks.

This week's New York Times Magazine cover article, "Can Animals Be Gay?," is about members of a vast variety of species who defy that presumption, and the endearingly dorky scientists who love them. Turns out with more than 450 species exhibiting some form of homosexual activity — ranging from casual sex to monogamous pairings — the default to heterosexuality in biological research becomes simply bad science.

It won't be news to many that animals in the wild have been found, from time to time, engaging in something other than male-female pairing. Until very recently, scientific research regarded gay animal pairings as "against nature" or as an errant evolutionary blip, and shrugged it off as scientifically irrelevant. A new crop of scientists are beginning to see the importance of incorporating such findings into their research ... since, by definition, they're studying a species' behavior. As one scientist is quick to point out, she's not studying homosexuality; she's just studying the albatross.

Scientists are wary of engaging in any sort of anthropomorphism, even though we humans love to use animals as a way of examining and distinguishing our own behavior. In some cases, however, the similarities are hard to ignore. For example, I've known plenty of women who, just like a female Japanese macaque, date other women until they decide they'd like to settle down with a dude. And just like lesbian albatross couples, there are lesbian couples I know who have solicited sperm from a willing male and then laid eggs in their own nest.

Scientists, having only recently discovered the span of such activity, can't, or just won't, explain why homosexuality exists. Paul Vasey, who has been studying homosexual behaviors in macaques and other animals, thinks it might be practice, or it might be sport, or it might be something bigger. Since there's nothing about this behavior that threatens the continued existence of the species, evolution hasn't stamped out the same-sex activity. As Vasey explains, "The females are physically capable of mounting any gender of macaque. They’ve just never developed an instinct to limit themselves to one."

Is there a lesson to be learned here about our own sexual evolution? I think the simplest answer is that homosexuality and evolutionary progress aren't mutually exclusive. Some 450 species engaging in the same kind of stuff that we do — mostly heterosexual coupling, some homosexual coupling, some "mutually exclusive" agreements between multiple members — all of them thriving, none on the brink of extinction due to rampant homosexual behavior.

If evolution is the process by which a species perfects itself, protecting itself from traits and behaviors that have no value to progress (both biological and social), and homosexual behavior crops up in dung beetle colonies and dolphin pods, then who's to say that homosexual behavior isn't part of the bigger picture?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons