Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Animal homosexuality is by no means a “new” discovery by modern science. Some of the earliest statements regarding homosexual behavior in animals date back to ancient Greece, while the first detailed scientific studies of same-sex behavior were made in the 1700s and 1800s. From the very beginning, descriptions of homosexuality in animals were accompanied by attempts to interpret or explain its occurrence, and observers who witnessed the behavior were almost invariably puzzled, astonished, and even upset by the simple fact of its existence. As the quotes above illustrate, many of these same attitudes have continued to this day. With more than 200 years of scientific attention devoted to the subject, how is it that so many people today—many scientists included—are unaware of the full extent and characteristics of animal homosexuality, and/or continue to be puzzled by its occurrence? This chapter seeks to answer this question, first by chronicling the history of the study of homosexuality in animals, and then by documenting the systematic omissions and negative attitudes of many zoologists in dealing with this phenomenon. As we will see, a history of the scientific study of animal homosexuality is necessarily also a history of human attitudes toward homosexuality.

A Brief History of the Study of Animal Homosexuality

The history of animal homosexuality in Western scientific thought begins with the early speculations of Aristotle and the Egyptian scholar Horapollo on “hermaphroditism” in hyenas, homosexuality in partridges, and variant genders and sexualities in several other species.² Although much of their thinking was infused with mythology and anthropomorphism, and there are notable inaccuracies in their observations (the Spotted Hyena, for example, is not hermaphroditic), the discussions of these scholars represent the first recorded thoughts on homosexuality and transgender in animals. The earliest scientific observations of animal homosexuality are those of the noted French naturalist (and count) Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, whose monumental fifteen-volume Histoire naturelle générale et particulière (1749—67) includes observations of same-sex behavior in birds. Additional observations on homosexuality in birds were made in the eighteenth century by the British biologist George Edwards, and (as indicated above) they also include some of the first pronouncements about the supposed “causes” and “abnormality” of such behavior.³