Scientists: Lots of animals are gay, you know

A new paper published in the journal Nature this week caught the attention of the New York Times. The paper is titled, “The evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals,” and it deals with pretty much you would expect from such a description, though it goes much further than just mammals. I was originally a bit surprised that the paper wasn’t published during pride month so the Gray Lady could really celebrate it, but one of the paper’s authors told reporters that their findings really “don’t shed any light” on human sexuality at all. Same-sex attraction in other animals probably showed up later in the evolutionary process and it likely developed as a mechanism to reduce conflict and minimize aggression between members of the same species. Just to clarify one bit of snark in the title of this post, the paper’s authors don’t actually refer to any of the animals in the study as “gay.” (Sorry, LGBTQXYZ folks.)Read More