Of Gay Penguins and Lesbian Fruit Flies

Biology can be fun!  Case in point, a new study by University of California researchers who have found that there is essentially no animal species that doesn't practice homosexuality in some capacity.  In other words, and to rewrite that sentence because it uses a horrible double negative, homosexuality runs rampant through all species.

And that would include us humans, too, despite what the Family Research Council or the Yes on 8 folks might think.

Researchers Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk have found that same-sex couples exist in all walks of animal life, from insects to humans, and that same-sex relationships take on different meaning within many different types of species.  Here's Bailey on the study:

It's clear that same-sex sexual behaviour extends far beyond the well-known examples that dominate both the scientific and popular literature: for example, bonobos, dolphins, penguins and fruit flies.  These are astoundingly variable between species, and even sometimes within species.  For example, male fruit flies that cannot distinguish between the sexes because they lack a key gene might court and mount other males, but this has a wholly different origin and function than male-male sexual interactions in bottlenose dolphins, for example, which studies suggest maintain group cohesion.

Dolphins, fruit flies, Goodeid fishes, humans...the list goes on and on for Bailey and Zuk.  The implications?  Well, that sexual orientation is likely biological, at least in some capacity.  And while that worries some, who think that science might be used as a weapon to isolate any "gay" gene, there's a flip side to the argument that suggests that biologically, sexual orientation is no different than race, eye color, or shoe size.