Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

The entire history of ideas about, and attitudes toward, homosexuality is encapsulated in the titles of zoological articles (or book chapters) on the subject through the ages: “Sexual Perversion in Male Beetles” (1896), “Sexual Inversion in Animals” (1908), “Disturbances of the Sexual Sense [in Baboons]” (1922), “Pseudomale Behavior in a Female Bengalee [a domesticated finch]” (1957), “Aberrant Sexual Behavior in the South African Ostrich” (1972), “Abnormal Sexual Behavior of Confined Female Hemichienus auritus syriacus [Long-eared Hedgehogs]” (1981), “Pseudocopulation in Nature in a Unisexual Whiptail Lizard” (1991).¹⁶ The prize, though, surely has to go to W. J. Tennent, who in 1987 published an article entitled “A Note on the Apparent Lowering of Moral Standards in the Lepidoptera.” In this unintentionally revealing report, the author describes the homosexual mating of Mazarine Blue butterflies in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The entomologist’s behavioral observations, however, are prefaced with a lament: “It is a sad sign of our times that the National newspapers are all too often packed with the lurid details of declining moral standards and of horrific sexual offences committed by our fellow Homo sapiens; perhaps it is also a sign of the times that the entomological literature appears of late to be heading in a similar direction.”¹⁷ Declining moral standards—in butterflies?! Remember, these are descriptions by scientists in respected scholarly publications of phenomena occurring in nature!

In addition to such labels as unnatural, abnormal, and perverse, a variety of other negative (or less than impartial) designations have also been employed in the scientific literature. Once again, these span the decades. Mounting among Domestic Bulls is characterized as a “male homosexual vice” (1983), echoing a description from nearly a century earlier in which same-sex activities between male Elephants are classified as “vices” and “crimes of sexuality” that are “prohibited by the rules of at least one Christian denomination” (1892). Courtship and mounting between male Lions is called an “atypical sexual fixation” (1942); same-sex relations in Buff-breasted Sandpipers are described in an article on “sexual nonsense” in this species (1989); while courtship and mounting between female Domestic Turkeys are referred to as “defects in sexual behavior” (1955). Homosexual activities in Spinner Dolphins (1984), Killer Whales (1992), Caribou (1974), and Adélie Penguins (1998) are characterized as “inappropriate” (or as being directed toward “inappropriate” partners), and same-sex courtship among Black-billed Magpies (1979) and Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock (1985) is called “misdirected.” In what is perhaps the most oblique designation, one scientist uses the term heteroclite (meaning “irregular” or “deviant”) to refer to Sage Grouse engaging in homosexual courtship or copulations (1942).¹⁸