Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

For most people, animals are symbolic: their significance lies not in what they are, but in what we think they are. We ascribe meanings and values to their existence and behaviors in ways that usually have little to do with their biological and social realities, treating them as emblems of nature’s purity or bestiality in order to justify, ultimately, our views of other human beings. The animals themselves remain enigmatic, mute in the face of this seemingly endless onslaught of human interpretations of their lives. If this were merely a matter of debate among people, it could perhaps be put in its proper perspective as simply yet another human folly. Unfortunately, the interpretations applied to animal (sexual) behaviors by people are far from innocuous: they can have grave consequences, or even be a matter of life or death—for both humans and animals alike. When a gay man or lesbian is assaulted or murdered because the attacker thinks that homosexuality is “unnatural,” for example, or when politicians’ legislative and judicial decisions concerning homosexuality are coded in such terms as “crimes against nature,” much more is at stake than the scientific interpretation of animal behavior.⁷⁹

The moral value ascribed to animal sexuality can also impact directly on the welfare of the creatures themselves. In 1995 a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service briefed Senator Jesse Helms’s staff about the value of saving an endangered bird, the red-cockaded woodpecker, which lives in the southeastern United States.⁸⁰ His presentation stressed the supposed “family values” of the species, referring to the birds’ monogamous and relatively long-lasting heterosexual pair-bonds. In other words, the right of this species to exist—as determined by legislators voting on the Endangered Species Act—was predicated not on its intrinsic value, but on how closely its behavior could be made to resemble what is currently considered acceptable conduct for humans. And this is most definitely a case of presenting an idealized “image” of the species: the red-cockaded woodpecker’s “family values” are in reality far more complex, messy, and “questionable” than what the politicians were told.

True, this species usually breeds in long-term, monogamous pairs, but its social life is replete with variations on this theme, some of which Senator Helms would have found downright horrifying.⁸¹ Many family groups in this species are unstable: one six-year investigation found that only six out of thirteen breeding pairs remained together, while studies of the species in Helms’s home state of North Carolina revealed that nearly 20 percent of females in this population desert their mates and switch family groups. Males sometimes leave their partners as well, and the overall (species-wide) divorce rate is about 5 percent; nonmonogamous copulations also occasionally occur, with slightly more than 1 percent of nestlings being fathered by a male other than their mother’s mate. Red-cockaded woodpeckers also frequently live in “stepfamilies” or “blended families”: more than a quarter of the younger birds who live in breeding groups and help with parenting duties may be related to only one parent, and 5–11 percent are related to neither. Some of these “helper” birds engage in decidedly un-family-like activities, such as ousting a parent from its group or even committing “stepfamily incest” by mating with the remaining parent. Incest involving full or half siblings, though rare, also occurs. Other helpers forgo reproduction entirely (continuing to live with their parents as adults for several years), and there are also solitary nonbreeding birds in the population, as well as all-male groups. Some red-cockaded woodpecker groups may also be polygamous or “plural” breeding units, with two females both breeding (or trying to breed) at the same time.

Would the red-cockaded woodpecker be considered less “deserving” of protection if Senator Helms and his staff learned that these birds participate in nonreproductive sexual activity (mating during incubation, or long before egg-laying), or siblicide and starving of offspring, or infanticide and chick-tossing from the nest? All of these behaviors have been documented in this species, yet none were included in the scientific presentation to the politicians in whose hands this bird’s fate rests, for they would shatter the illusion of its “family values.” Homosexual activity has not (yet) been observed in red-cockaded woodpeckers, although it does occur in related species such as Acorn Woodpeckers and Black-rumped Flamebacks. Should such behavior come to light, one can only dread the consequences for this, or any other, endangered species whose survival depends on human assessment of its “moral conduct.”