Homosexuality Common in the Wild, Scientists Say

Fox News ^

[Pizonce11]

As gay couples celebrate their newfound right to marry in California and opposition groups rally to fight the ruling, many struggle with this question: Is homosexuality natural?

On this issue, Nature has spoken: Same-sex lovin' is common in hundreds of species, scientists say.

Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo, were a couple for about six years, during which they nurtured a fertilized egg together (given to them by a zookeeper) and raised the young chick that hatched.

According to University of Oslo zoologist Petter Böckman, about 1,500 animal species are known to practice same-sex coupling, including bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls, salmon and many others.

If homosexuality is natural in the animal kingdom, then there is the question of why evolution hasn't eliminated this trait from the gene pool, since it doesn't lead to reproduction.

[ketsu]

Actually, schizophrenia is maladaptive, not adaptive. Adaptive outcomes have benefits.

I was unclear, *intelligence* is the adaptive benefit for the majority of people with the genes. For a few people that get an unfortunate combination of recessive traits, they become schizophrenic. On the whole the increased intelligence is a greater overall benefit, meaning that the genes for schizophrenia hang around in population.

[SoldierDad]

Okay, that makes more sense.

[derllak]

Lol! Shame on you, Pissy! Seat sniffer! :P

[Claud]

I call BS on this. It is not common for animals of the same sex to ‘pair up’. They might hang out together, but that is not the same thing and bonding with a mate and actually ‘mating’. I have watched literally hundreds of hours of nature documentaries and never has this been mentioned. Species don’t get very far by being homosexual.

Every time I’ve looked into one of these claims I find a homosexual who is trying to pretend his behavior is “natural”. Not once have I found that any animals that have a common behavior of attempting to form a mating pair bond (reproductive behavior) with a member of their own sex. I CALL BS.

Bingo. Me three calling BS on this. The homosexual activists are very clever about this. Their first trick is to define "animal homosexuality" very broadly. Male wolves mounting other male wolves for instance. And the penguin thing.

But to what degree does the animal kingdom see "homosexuality" the way homosexuals claim to define it? They claim to not be interested in male/female sexual relations at all. They claim to be just a same-sex equivalent of marriage. It's not just a matter of occasional genital contact or hanging out together.

To find an animal equivalent, we'd have to find an animal that did not mate with a member of the opposite sex, mated repeatedly with its own sex, and formed the same kinds of pair bonds or exhibited behaviors just like male/female pairs.

I haven't reviewed the literature exhaustively, but I haven't seen that in the animal kingdom either.

[SampleMan]

There's no definitive explanation that I know of. But if you look at the role of self-negating behaviors, like sacrificing yourself to save your group(i.e. sheep bellwethers, prairie dogs), in the evolution of social animals, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that homos are beneficial in a social hierarchy, ensuring the propagation of people that are related to them(thereby increasing the spread of homosexual genes).

There are no imaginable behaviors that cannot have some outlandish, unprovable evolutionary justification attached to them. Just checking to see if I was still correct.

[SampleMan]

Hence, it's feasible this kind of behavior could have a selective advantage in that social structure.

The word "feasible" makes all evolutionary theories possible.

e.g. Mass murderers of children are likely a natural and desirable evolutionary development, as it is feasible that their actions instill a deeper sense of protection among those not affected, with the end result being a higher proportion of children surviving to adulthood. This would be especially true in highly communicative species such as humans.

See anyone can do it. You don't need to be a scientist, just imaginative.

[SampleMan]

The homosexuality gene is random and has something to do with softball.

By far the most intelligent response that I got.

[MarkAmerican]

“It’s always been an obligation, intended to be undertaken by a male and a female prior to engaging in behavior which might be reasonably expected to produce children.”

Actually, the history of marriage was more of a business deal to secure fortunes or raise status.

Even in the Bible, many of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives and concubines.

And if producing children is what defines marriage, then anyone too old to bear children should be prohibited from getting married and if a couple does not produce children within, say 2 years of getting married, they must divorce.

[DuncanWaring]

Actually, the history of marriage was more of a business deal to secure fortunes or raise status.

99.9% of all the people who ever lived have generally been dirt-poor, with no fortune or status to be improved by a business marriage.

Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives and concubines of the female persuasion.

"Producing children" is not what defines marriage. Creating an environment most likely to lead to healthy, competent adults is what defines marriage.

Welcome to FR. Your short posting history shows your sole interest to be the promotion of "homosexual marriage". Do you have any other interests?

[Axenolith]

Animals aren't homosexual in the wild, this is just crap. The only time they exhibit this behaviour is under stress and wouldn't you know, most of the examples are in zoos. You might also get some of the "apparent" activity as manifested by dominance behavior, but in a nutshell it being "common in the wild" and "genetically based" is bogus activism based pseudo-science. It just isn't possible that it would survive selection over time.

[ketsu]

There are no imaginable behaviors that cannot have some outlandish, unprovable evolutionary justification attached to them. Just checking to see if I was still correct.

If we actually cared about the nature of homosexuality, opposed to proving a political point, we'd check the incidence of homosexuality in social versus solitary animals. It's already known that pack animals are disproportionately homosexual(10% of male rams for example). If solitary animals contained fewer homosexuals it would go a long way towards proving the "beneficial to society" argument.

[joseph20]

"Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo, were a couple for about six years, during which they nurtured a fertilized egg together (given to them by a zookeeper) and raised the young chick that hatched."

How is it that two male penguins can be considered homosexual just because they cooperated in the raising of a baby penguin?

That makes no sense to me at all.

Were the two penguins engaging in any kind of sexual behavior together? My guess: No.

[Claud]

Actually, the history of marriage was more of a business deal to secure fortunes or raise status.

Ah, so men and women didn't fall in love in, say, 3000 B.C. They had a fundamentally different nature than us enlightened folk in 2008 who mystically evolved the ability to fall in love with each other in the time since then. Nah, back then marriage was all about contracts and cattle and land ownership...and that's why slaves never got married, doncha know.

This isn't the "history" of marriage...it is some modern theorists' silly projection on the history of marriage. And judging by the argument, a person who a) didn't like the institution very much and b) believed this Marxist twaddle that everything's about money.

[SampleMan]

If solitary animals contained fewer homosexuals it would go a long way towards proving the "beneficial to society" argument.

Or anything else that you wanted it to "prove", such as that an abundance of hormones in males makes them hyper-sexual, and that other hyper-sexual males are more receptive than the females.

In any event, your premise would provide no proof of societal benefit. For that you would actually have to observe a something called a benefit that could not be explained by other variables.

[MarkAmerican]

Actually, I have many interests and look at a few blog sites daily.

I like rational discussions, not accusations. Looking at facts, not just reacting to our internal beliefs. Therefore, I feel its important to bring in an alternative view so we can all think about our positions.

[MarkAmerican]

I never said people didn’t fall in love but there is a HUGH difference between “falling in love” and marriage. Hopefully, the two go together but not always.

And if its all about “falling in love”, then you should have no problem with two men or two women falling in love with each other.

And throwing such buzz words as “Marxist” does nothing to support an intelligent, rational discussion.

[dr_who]

We’ll release them into federal park lands instead... taking care to dig moats around all the public lavatories first.

[B4Ranch]

I may just take up hunting again if that works out to be how it happens.

[tophat9000]

Well a dog humping someone leg is common too... but I don't want to marry it