Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

While it is true that captivity sometimes does induce unusual behaviors in animals, the bulk of the evidence does not support this as a “cause” of animal homosexuality. As primatologist Linda Fedigan observes, “Although … homosexual relationships in animals can occur as a result of stressful captive conditions, we would suggest that all such behavior should not be dismissed as pathological or dysfunctional, a practice which results in ‘explaining it away’ rather than explaining it.”⁹⁵ On statistical grounds alone there is no substantiation for a greater incidence of homosexuality in captive animals—in fact, just the reverse is true. In more than 60 percent of the mammals and birds in which same-sex activity has been documented, this behavior occurs spontaneously in the wild. In more than two-thirds of these species, homosexuality has only been observed in the wild, while in the remaining cases it occurs in both wild and captive animals.⁹⁶ A number of scientists have remarked on a higher rate of homosexual activity in captivity compared to in the wild when the behavior occurs in both situations. In other words, there may be a quantitative, rather than qualitative, difference between wild and captive conditions, although the occurrence of homosexuality itself cannot be attributed to confinement. However, even this difference is less than clear-cut. In some species such as Orang-utans, Hamadryas Baboons, Mule Deer, and Musk-oxen, there does indeed appear to be a higher rate of homosexual courtship and/or sexual activity—as well as heterosexual activity—in captivity compared to the wild, although in some instances this is based on impressionistic observations.⁹⁷ In contrast, two species for which detailed quantitative information is available show nearly identical rates of same-sex activity in the wild versus captivity: in Bonobos, studies of wild animals have revealed that 45–46 percent of all sexual activity is homosexual, while a captive study yielded a figure of 49 percent; in Black Swans, one investigator found that 5 percent of captive pairs were homosexual while 6 percent of wild ones were.⁹⁸

Failure to observe homosexuality in the wild is more often due to incomplete study or inadequate observational techniques rather than an actual absence of the behavior in free-ranging animals. Time and again, same-sex activity has initially been seen only in captive animals and therefore declared to be definitively not a part of the “normal” sexual repertoire of the species in the wild. Yet when detailed field studies of the same species are finally conducted—often decades later—homosexuality is inevitably discovered. In fact, so pervasive or routine is the behavior now known to be for some species in the wild, that scientists have had to completely revise prior assessments of same-sex activity as “artificial” for these animals in captivity. In Bottlenose Dolphins, for example, male pairs engaging in homosexual behavior were originally observed in aquariums and were considered to be the “aberrant” result of keeping males together without females. Detailed longitudinal and demographic studies of the species—more than forty years later—revealed that male pairs, as well as sex segregation, are a prominent feature of the social organization of this species in the wild. By 1998, zoologists were actually advocating that captive male Bottlenose Dolphins be kept (and reintroduced into the wild) as bonded pairs, recognizing that these constitute a “natural functional social unit” of the species that can assist captive individuals in adjusting to life in the wild upon their release. Another example of a complete turnaround on the part of scientists concerns Gorillas. Early studies of this species reported that homosexuality was not seen in wild Gorillas; three decades later, extensive same-sex activity had been documented in both males and females in the mountain forests of Africa. By 1996, biologists and zookeepers were (at last) openly acknowledging that homosexuality in all-male groups was not an “artificial construct of captivity,” and were even encouraging the formation of such groups in zoos to approximate the species’ natural social patterns.⁹⁹