Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Table of Contents

Title Page

Snow

Introduction

Part 1 - A Polysexual, Polygendered World

Chapter1 - The Birds and the Bees

The Many Forms of Animal Homosexuality

What’s Good for the Goose … : Comparisons of Male and Female Homosexuality

A Hundred and One Lesbian Acts: Calculating the Frequency of Homosexual Behavior

Within Genders, Without Genders, Across Genders

Chapter2 - Humanistic Animals, Animalistic Humans

From Pederasty to Butch-Femme: Uniquely Human?

Primate (Homo)Sexuality and the Origins of Culture

Unnatural Nature

Chapter3 - Two Hundred Years of Looking at Homosexual Wildlife

A Brief History of the Study of Animal Homosexuality

“A Lowering of Moral Standards Among Butterflies”: Homophobia in Zoology

Anything but Sex

Chapter4 - Explaining (Away) Animal Homosexuality

“Which One Plays the Female Role?”—Homosexuality as Pseudoheterosexuality

“The Lengths to Which Deprived Creatures Will Go”—Homosexuality as Substitute Heterosexuality

“The Errors of Their Ways”—Homosexuality as Mistaken Sex Identification

“Gross Abnormalities of Behavior”—Homosexuality as Pathology

Chapter5 - Not for Breeding Only: Reproduction on the Periphery of Life

The Evolutionary “Value” of Homosexuality

Homosexuality in the Service of Heterosexuality

Nonreproductive and Alternative Heterosexualities in Animals

Chapter 6 - A New Paradigm: Biological Exuberance

Left-Handed Bears and Androgynous Cassowaries: Informing Biology with Indigenous Knowledge

A Revolution Under Way: Contemporary Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives - We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals … . They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

Returning to the Source: Indigenous Cosmologies and Fractal Sexualities

The Magnificent Overabundance of Reality

Part II - A Wondrous Bestiary Portraits of Homosexual, Bisexual, and Transgendered Wildlife

Introduction

Mammals

Primates

Marine Mammals

Hoofed Mammals

Other Mammals

Birds

Waterfowl and Other Aquatic Birds

Shore Birds

Perching Birds and Songbirds

Other Birds

Acknowledgments

STONEWALL INN EDITIONS KEITH KAHLA, GENERAL EDITOR

Praise

Appendix: Other Species

Notes to Part I

Credits and Permissions

Animal Index

Subject Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright Page

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

—LOUIS MACNEICE

… hugest whole creation may be less

incalculable than a single kiss

—E. E. CUMMINGS

Introduction

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this

emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and