Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

In a number of animals, some homosexual interactions have characteristics that could be interpreted as involving “pseudoheterosexuality” or transgendered behaviors, yet these constitute only a portion of same-sex activity in the species—and hence, only a partial “explanation,” at best, for the occurrence of these activities. In Tasmanian Native Hens, for example, males adopt a posture following heterosexual copulation that resembles the female’s invitation to mate—yet only one homosexual mounting recorded in this species was apparently triggered by this posture; the rest occurred in other contexts. Rhesus Macaque females who mount other females sometimes display typically “male” behaviors such as various head movements, the way they carry their tails, or other patterns—but just as many females, if not more, do not exhibit these behaviors as a part of their homosexual interactions.²¹

Perhaps the most compelling example of how homosexuality, transgender, and gender roles interact in unexpected ways concerns “femalelike” males in Mountain Sheep. In Bighorn and Thinhorn Sheep, being mounted by another male is a typically “male” activity. As described in chapter 1, most males participate in homosexual mounting throughout the year, while females generally refuse to allow males to mount them except for the two or so days out of the year when each of them is in heat. Consequently, transgendered males—rams who associate with females throughout the year (unlike most other males) and exhibit other female behavioral characteristics—do not typically allow other males to mount them. In other words, homosexual activity is characteristic of “masculine” males rather than “feminine” males in these species. Moreover, because same-sex mounting has such primacy in the social organization of these animals, heterosexual activity is actually patterned after homosexual interactions and not the other way around. Females in heat typically imitate the courtship patterns of male homosexual interactions in order to arouse the sexual interest of males—a remarkable example of the exact opposite of a “pseudoheterosexual” pattern.²²

Homosexual “Role-Playing”: Gender Blending and Amalgamation

In many animals gender roles of some sort do exist in homosexual interactions, but it is overly simplistic to consider these mere replicas of male and female behaviors. Gendered activities in a same-sex context are never an exact copy of heterosexual roles, and in many cases animals actually exhibit a complex mixture of male and female behavior patterns. This type of gender-role mixing assumes three basic forms: a continuum among individuals, role-differentiated combinations, and behavioral amalgams.²³ In some species, individuals vary along a scale or continuum in the extent to which their behaviors in homosexual interactions resemble “male” or “female” patterns. In Kob antelope, for example, some females utilize the full array of courtship patterns typically employed by males, others make use of none or few of these, while most females range somewhere in between these extremes.²⁴ Ruff males fall into four categories along a spectrum of most “malelike” to most “femalelike” in terms of appearance (presence and color of neck ruff, size), aggressive behavior, courtship behaviors, and other characteristics. However, these categories cut across aspects of sexual behavior, including participation in the “male” role of mounter and the “female” role of mountee in homosexual interactions. The most “malelike” males (residents) perform both roles as do the most “femalelike” males (naked-napes), while of the intermediate categories, some participate in both roles (satellite males) and some rarely engage in either (marginal males). In a number of species such as Gorillas, Hanuman Langurs, and Rhesus, Bonnet, and Pig-tailed Macaques, some individuals clearly prefer (or end up mostly participating) in the “mounter” as opposed to the “mountee” roles during same-sex activity, while for other individuals the reverse is true. Yet these patterns represent the two poles of a continuum, since many individuals in these species actually fall along the entire range in terms of their mounting activities.²⁵