Back in the day, reporting on same sex behaviour in animals could have implications for someone’s career. In the 70s a pair of married scientists, George Hunt, who was at the University of California, and his partner Molly Hunt, studied gulls on a small island off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and found that about 14% were lesbian couples. Their research, when published, collided with the gay liberation movement and the Stonewall riots, and caused an enormous political, religious and societal backlash. An artist called Tom Wilson Weinberg wrote a song about it called, aptly, Lesbian Seagull, and the mighty Engelbert Humperdinck covered it. The House of Representatives got involved and even held up the funding budget for the National Science Foundation. But surely all this is ancient history?
Karyn Anderson, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto is the first author of a recently published paper in PLOS One, where other researchers were interviewed about the activities they had observed in animals. It turns out that when same sex sexual behaviour (SSSB) is witnessed, it is assumed to be rare, and therefore it is equally rarely reported, even though everyone is seeing it all of the time. They concluded that “Researchers found preliminary evidence that SSSB occurs more frequently than what is available in the published record, and suggest that this may be due to a publishing bias against anecdotal evidence.“
Irresistible asked Anderson what she thought was going on. “I’m certain that the misconception that SSSB is rare in mammals has contributed to broader narratives about homosexuality being “unnatural” in humans,” she told us over email. “I think the underlying idea that SSSB is rare and thus it’s unnatural should be corrected. I also do not believe that we should need to use animal behaviour to justify human behaviour. If this research helps to break down biases about human homosexuality I am happy about that, but ultimately this connection between nature and morality needs to be broken down as well.”
Professor Janet Mann is from Georgetown University and has been a long term researcher of some famous gay dolphins, Cookie and Smokey, at the Shark Bay Dolphin Project in Western Australia.
She told us how the came to follow the love lives of the dolphins. “Early in my career, when I was a graduate student, and started studying wild Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin mothers and calves, it was evident that calves and juveniles frequently engaged in SSSB. Because we track the dolphins from birth to death, we have followed their relationships over decades. Cookie and Smokey were the first calves I observed with a close bond, who engaged in frequent SSSB with each other and often involving other young males close in age. Three of those males, Cookie, Smokey and Urchin (well into their 30s), are still very close to this day. Clearly SSSB was important for bond formation. We did have a fair amount of data, but after many years of observation, some of which was published in a book chapter in Homosexual Behaviour in Animals in 2006. One of our local playwrights, Natsu Onoda Power, even incorporated it into one of her plays, The T Party, which was widely acclaimed.”
Dr José M. Gómez from the Departament of Ecology University of Granada (UGR) and Research Professor at the Departament of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA-CSIC) was the lead author of a paper last year in Nature which found that, “Same-sex sexual behaviour and other species characteristics suggest that it may play an adaptive role in maintaining social relationships and mitigating conflict.” He and his team studied the evolution of SSSB across different animal groups to produce this amazing wheel of gay activity. When we caught up with him he told Irresistible, “Yes, I believe there is a gap in our knowledge on SSSB. In fact, in our 2023 article we started the Result section with a preliminary cautionary note in which we recognize that there is a lack of information on the sexual behaviour of many mammalian species. I presume that if we continue doing long-term field studies, we will find more species displaying SSBB.”
He also pointed out that some animals don’t worry about labels. Some can be in long- term homosexual partnerships and some aren’t so worried about identity. “In non-human mammals,” he told us, “same-sex sexual behaviour, as studied by most researchers, does not denote sexual orientation i.e., a general pattern of sexual attraction/arousal over time, sexual orientation identity i.e., the sexual orientation that individuals perceive themselves to have, or categories of sexual beings i.e., homosexual, heterosexual, etc.” As human boundaries between gender and sexual orientation continue to mutate, maybe this is our future model. What does seem to be apparent though is whenever SSSB is observed in animal populations, the rest of the group don’t bad an eyelid.
Echoing that sentiment is Jonathan Hollins, author of Vet at the End of the Earth (Duckworth Books Ltd., 2024), who for some time has been living on the island of St. Helena and looking after the oldest living world’s oldest land animal – a 200-year-old giant tortoise- who also happens to be bisexual. As Hollins told Irresistible, “In the past Jonathan was frequently seen mating with Emma or Fred, and Governor Capes used to joke that he could hear the extraordinarily loud grunting at the back of Plantation, the huge Georgian East India Company stately home designated as the governor’s residence. Although Jonathan has slowed down a bit, at 192 years of age this shows remarkable – if not enviable – libido. As a vet, I can truly say this is uncontroversial and entirely normal behaviour. Animals are not particularly gender sensitive when it comes to gaining pleasure from the erogenous zones, except of course when guided by hormonal cycles and pheromones for the propagation of the species. It’s only humans that tangle this issue, but as I frequently point out, we all too often get above ourselves and forget that we are also part of the animal kingdom!”
Back here in Sydney, same sex Gentoo penguin couple Sphen and Magic, who live at SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, began developing a strong bond in 2018 and became inseparable before breeding season. They were constantly seen waddling around and going for swims together. They’re still going strong and in fact, the penguin keepers say they’re one of the most bonded pairs. In October 2018 the boys successfully hatched baby Sphengic and they’ve never looked back. Caroline Monro, Keeper at SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, told Irresistible, “Sphen and Magic have been coupling for over six years now, and every mating season they come back stronger than ever. They’ve now successfully raised two chicks and are brilliant parents. We’ll be setting up the nests in a few weeks, which marks the start of another mating season, and we’re confident that Sphen and Magic will establish their strong partnership early on and build the most impressive nest, as they do each year!”
We asked Karyn Anderson why she thinks people love gay animal stories. “I think we love to see ourselves reflected in other animals, and any research that people can feel connected to is bound to get more attention,” she said. “As a queer person myself, I love to be able to do this research and explore the queerness of nature. I also think that this research is still somewhat surprising to people – our survey indicated that most respondents felt SSSB was very rare, but it was reported by most respondents and appears to be quite widespread despite these beliefs.”
There’s a hunger for information about the Gay Natural World, finding its way to the public through other avenues. Josh Davies works at the Natural History Museum in London and has even developed a tour there to “discover queer notes about the world of Natural History.” His book was a natural follow-up which will soon be available to order online.. Based in Canada, animal enthusiasts Owen Ever and Laine Kaplan-Levenson have started a podcast doubling down on the stories, describing themselves as, “on a quest to see beyond the natural world as we know it and into the natural world as it is: queer as fuck.” They’ve already scored an Official Selection of the 2024 Tribeca Festival and a host of top notch guests. Owen Ever told Irresistible, “Despite what classroom syllabi and scientific journals may leave you believing, there’s nothing novel about animal queerness! In fact, in 1999 the incredible book Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl documented 450 species. We made our show to celebrate the abundant diversity of the Animal Queendom, which we are a part of.”
Back to the research, it’s not hard to imagine that some of the data about SSSB is just quite hard to collect, due to distance, identification and visibility. The academic community is hard wired to prefer quantitative over qualitative data, and while it need not be less rigorous there is a feeling that published research could have the freedom to be more nuanced. Professor Janet Mann told us, “I do think anecdotes can be important. Some journals encourage these. Usually it has to be a dramatic event, such as observation of a predation event or infanticide.” As Karyn Anderson told us, “I hope there is greater acceptance of narrative and anecdotal reports in animal behaviour research. Anecdotes can tell us a lot about a species, and can also give us insight into broader taxonomic trends. Behaviours which are perceived to be rare such as same-sex sexual behaviour would really benefit from more anecdotal reporting so we can have a better understanding of its distribution across animals.”
And the still song lives on.
