The logic behind such laws, it seems to me, goes something like this: If queerness doesn’t come about naturally, then it can be walled out of human populations by limiting access to the very idea of it. This conundrum has started to feel far more than academic in recent months, as multiple states have passed legislation restricting reading about or even discussing LGBTQIA+ identities in schools. In a Noah’s Ark conception of life, with dutifully procreating male-female pairs for each animal species, non-straight behavior seems to disrupt the natural order by preventing the transmission of genes over generations. There are now reputable evidence-confirmed findings of such behavior in 1,500 animal species and counting.Īs a graduate student in animal studies, I’ve often faced an unpleasant prospect: The theory of natural selection, at least as it’s classically considered, could argue that queerness shouldn’t exist. While few animals are exclusively “gay” or “lesbian,” an extraordinary number, it appears, engage in some form of same-sex relations. Over the past 20 years, a burst of research - driven in part by a new generation of scientists more accepting of queerness - has shown significant amounts of previously unreported homosexual behavior throughout the animal kingdom, from flour beetles to gorillas. Penguins aren’t the only sexually adventuresome animals.
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