Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

Even when homosexual behavior is recognized as such, detailed study of it is often omitted or passed over, or the phenomenon is marginalized and trivialized. For instance, numerous published reports on the courtship and copulation behavior of animals provide excruciatingly detailed descriptions and statistics on frequency of mounts, number of ejaculations, duration of penile erections, number of thrusts, timing of estrous cycles, total number of sexual partners, and so on and so forth—but all for heterosexual interactions. In contrast, homosexual activity is often mentioned only in passing, not deemed worthy of the exhaustive coverage that is afforded “real” sexual behavior.⁴⁹ In a detailed study of Spinner Dolphin sexual activity, for example, only heterosexual behavior is quantified and given a thorough statistical treatment, even though the author recognizes the prominence of homosexual activity in this species and actually states directly that its frequency exceeds that of heterosexual behavior. Another study of the same species mentions homosexual copulations without providing the total number observed, unlike heterosexual matings. In a tabulation of homosexual and heterosexual activity in Kob antelopes, the number of male partners of each female is cataloged while the number of female partners is not. Likewise, articles on Crested Black Macaque and Brown Capuchin sexual behavior acknowledge the occurrence of female homosexual activity yet offer no statistics on this behavior, even though it is said to be more common (in Crested Blacks) than male homosexual activity (which, along with heterosexual behavior, is quantified). Finally, graphs of the frequency of various Giraffe activities in one study fail to provide adequate information on homosexual mounts: all same-sex interactions are lumped into the category of “sparring” (a form of fighting) without distinguishing actual sparring from necking (a ritualized, nonviolent form of play-fighting and affection) or mounting activity.⁵⁰

Sometimes certain aspects of homosexual activity are excluded or arbitrarily eliminated from an overall analysis or tabulation—often resulting in a distorted picture of same-sex interactions (regardless of whether the omission is deliberate or well-motivated). For instance, a female Western Gull who exhibited the most overt sexual activity with her female partner was “not included in the tabulated statistics” of a study comparing heterosexual and homosexual behaviors. By failing to incorporate data from this individual (intentionally or not), researchers undoubtedly helped foster the (now widely cited) impression that sexual activity is a uniformly negligible aspect of female pairing in this species. Along the same lines, scientists surveying pair formation in Black-crowned Night Herons only tabulated homosexual couples that they considered to be “caused” by the “crowded” conditions of captivity. They ignored a male pair whose formation could not be attributed to such conditions and also overlooked the fact that such “crowded” conditions regularly occur in wild colonies of the same species. And all data concerning same-sex pairs or coparents in Laughing Gulls, Canary-winged Parakeets, Greater Rheas, and Zebra Finches were excluded from general studies of pair-bonding, nesting, or other behaviors in these species.⁵¹