Zoo keepers at the Toronto Zoo are planning on breaking up a pair of male penguins who spend most of their time together and exhibit mating habits normally seen between male-female penguin pairs. Their reason for wanting to force the separation is to get them to mate with female penguins because of their “top-notch genes” and because the species are threatened with extinction.
November 7, 2011
Toronto Zoo Keepers Plan on Breaking Up Gay Penguin Pair
October 27, 2009
OMG: Queer Animals, It’s A Big Gay Old World.
According to this article from 2006 (related to the Norwegian Natural History Museum’s exhibit on homosexuality in the animal kingdom), at that time it was known that over 1500 species practice homosexuality. That’s a lot of male on male, female on female loving going on out there.
One of the most known, and perhaps the most relevant to humans, is the pygmy (or Bonobo) chimpanzee. This species is slighly smaller than the common chimpanzee and it has been well documented that these chimps often form same-sex partnerships as well as practicing a communal raising of young and often solving issues with sexual gratification as opposed to violence. These chimps and the commons chimps (which have also displayed homosexual behaviour/partnerships) are the closest living relatives to Homo-Sapiens (we share most of our genetic make-up with them).
Other animals well known for homosexual relationships are Dolphins, Horses, and many Birds. In fact life long homosexual partnering has been frequently observed amongst birds - even “adopting” eggs or fostering chicks.
So much for the it’s not natural - nature it seems has displayed otherwise.
Also see a some what related post Gayvolution.
Slainte!
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