Reading time: 2 minutes – Spotted on The Guardian
Male penguins frequently having sex with other male penguins. The year is 1911, and the observation surprises George Murray Levick, explorer on the Scott Antarctic Expedition. It shocked him to the point that it did not appear in the official report of the expedition, which nevertheless aimed to study the reproductive cycle of Adélie penguins. It did not appear in scientific literature until fifty years later.
Today, sexual behaviors between animals of the same sex are reported in a wide variety of species. However, new analysis reported by the Guardian suggests there is a gap between how often these relationships occur and how often we hear about them.
The survey, which has just been published in PLOS One, was carried out among specialists in animal sciences. Karyn Anderson is the first author of the study. This graduate in anthropology at the University of Toronto (Canada) explains that this phenomenon is due “to the fact that researchers believe that sexual behavior between individuals of the same sex is very rare. However, we found that the participants in our study frequently observed [ces comportements].»
Advantages for evolution
The numbers speak for themselves. Of sixty-five researchers working on fifty-two different species, 77% had observed sexual behavior between animals of the same sex, such as mounting (mating) or genital stimulation. 48% have collected data and only 19% have published their conclusions.
Japanese penguins and macaques have become star animals when it comes to same-sex mating. The latest analysis even featured matings that have never been the subject of scientific reports. This is the case for mole rats, squirrels, mongooses, ring-tailed coatis and various monkeys.
Josh Davis, from the Natural History Museum, London and author of A Little Gay Natural History considers that“About 1,500 species have been observed exhibiting homosexual behavior. But this is certainly an underestimate, because these behaviors are noted in almost all branches of the evolutionary tree: spiders, squids, monkeys.
Paul Vasey, a professor at the University of Lethbridge in the Canadian province of Alberta, has been studying female homosexual behavior in Japanese macaques for more than thirty years. “I can say with certainty that in certain populations, female homosexual behavior is relatively common”, declares the psychologist. The specialists interviewed as part of the study led by Karyn Anderson assure in any case that they are not influenced by socio-political concerns.
In the past, these same-sex relationships were often seen as a “Darwinian paradox,” contradicting (apparently) the evolutionary pressure to survive and reproduce. However, there is growing evidence that these matings may have evolutionary advantages. For example, among black swans, male-male pairs frequently court each other, steal eggs, raise chicks together and ensure the survival of the young better than heterosexual swan pairs.
In fact, animal behavior becomes a prism through which humans attempt to make sense of their own nature. “I don’t think we should rely on what animals do or don’t do to set standards for human behaviorestimates Julia Monk, of the University of California at Berkeley (United States). But it is important to better study the way animals live and to ask the extent to which our understanding of the natural world has been limited by our own social imagination.»
