Gay penguins get the cold shoulder

Gay penguins have been given the cold shoulder at a zoo in China after trying to steal eggs to become surrogate dads.

Keepers have segregated the couple after they caught them trying to trick straight birds into parting with their offspring by placing round stones at their feet and then running off with an egg.

Experts at the Polarland Park in Harbin, north east China, say that despite being gay the three year old male birds are still driven by an urge to be dads.

"One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite this being a biological impossibility for this couple, the natural desire is still there," explained a keeper.

"It's not discrimination. We have to fence them separately, otherwise the whole group will be disturbed during hatching time," they added.

Austrian Times

I found the article.

http://www.austriantimes.at/index.php?id=9787


TADA!

Thanks Lynn

That is cool. I read a few more articles & some chats about gay penguins too. Interesting.

Imagine that. The penguins were born that way.

wild

<quote>imagine that. The penguins were born that way.<quote>
Are you suggesting the behavior is genetic?
Nature or Nurture?
I going to lean towards nurture when it comes to how the males want to take an egg.

Scientific research is showing that humans are born gay. That is why I said the comment about the animals. It's been there all along just like with humans.


I find it the comparisons interesting. The penguins want children...so do gay people.

Has science isolated a specfic gene or a part of the geneome that allows it. If so who has done the research and where? Also if not that would still go towards my arguement that it is more nurture then nature that promotes it.

does that make it natural now


hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

how at the religious right going to explain this

and gives a new meaning to that cartoon

chilly willy

Well they better not come around my penguins. I dont want it rubbing off on them. They might just teach them to be gay..Promotes it it!!!!Please We are running a buy one get one free. Bring in your old gay for a trade in

actually...recent research has show that not only have scientists be unable to locate the so called gay gene...that there's also...limited to zero external characteristics for being or becoming gay...

People need to stop focusing on genes. There is also the period during gestation in which a female fetus becomes male and it may be traced to that time period as well.

In which case it wouldn't be a gene in the individual who is gay, but a factor in the mother's body during that particular pregnancy.

Since gender confusion can show up VERY early on in childhood, and people want to insist it is choice or nurture, then I want to know what parents are doing to infants that is causing female brain patterns to emerge in boys and and male brain patterns to develope in girls. Or explain to me how toddlers are making the choice to be homosexual.

Which is why a biological factor makes far more sense to me.

Or explain to me how toddlers are making the choice to be homosexual.

I've never...seen or heard of this...actual toddlers...showing homosexual tendencies ?...doing what ?...I'm curious...

Very young children have shown evidence of gender identity, abuguity, or confusion.

People who have identified themselves has transgendered often gravitated towards activities traditionally viewed as approriate to the gender they were NOT born when very young.

Studies of children under the age of 4 years show that girls and boys have very different communication styles and methods of interations. Transgendered individuals often show the communication styles of the opposite gender at very early ages.

Now some of the studies of the 'size' of various 'areas' in the brain are questionable. I agree. But one thing that has been deterimined is that the brainwave patterns of homosexual men are closer to that of hetrosexual women and those of homosexual women are closer to that of hetrosexual men.

One arguement is that people make the choice to be gay and are therefore creating new behaviors and new brainwave patterns. But why are they discovering differences in young brains before the children are making choices in sexuality?

whachu talkin' bout Willis !!... ...gulp !!....**uncle**

My son had a doll when he was young.Loved it to death.Outgrew it.I think lil children could careless what they play with or have on their bodies.It's the parents who freak out and thrust gender roles upon kids.
I agree with moondark that people are not raised to be gay.How absurd.No parent I know would put their kid through the agony of dealing with ignorant,judgemental people.
I do have trouble with gay animals though as a male in rutting season will f@#$k anything that moves.JMO

Someone above said roughly that it must be behavioral because the males chose to steal eggs. I think that poster forgets that those two males decided to bond, to pair up before they stole the eggs.

Below is an article from National Geographic you all might enjoy. Homosexuality does occur in many many animal species. We too are animals. The article is from 2004 and there is newer research.

The debate over sexual orientation being the result of nature or nurture is an old one and is on-going. Both sides cite science to support their arguments. Some cite other sources as well.

The fact is we just don't know why but for me the why doesn't matter so much as what comes next. How we handle the fact that homosexuality exists because it does as we see in many species. This is how I handle it. I treat others as I expect to be treated myself and leave judgment aside. It's not my place.


James Owen in London
for National Geographic News
July 23, 2004

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. So go the lyrics penned by U.S. songwriter Cole Porter.

Porter, who first hit it big in the 1920s, wouldn't risk parading his homosexuality in public. In his day "the birds and the bees" generally meant only one thing—sex between a male and female.

But, actually, some same-sex birds do do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom.

Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo have been inseparable for six years now. They display classic pair-bonding behavior—entwining of necks, mutual preening, flipper flapping, and the rest. They also have sex, while ignoring potential female mates.

Wild birds exhibit similar behavior. There are male ostriches that only court their own gender, and pairs of male flamingos that mate, build nests, and even raise foster chicks.

Filmmakers recently went in search of homosexual wild animals as part of a National Geographic Ultimate Explorer documentary about the female's role in the mating game. (The film, Girl Power, will be screened in the U.S this Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m PT on MSNBC TV.)

The team caught female Japanese macaques engaged in intimate acts which, if observed in humans, would be in the X-rated category.

"The homosexual behavior that goes on is completely baffling and intriguing," says National Geographic Ultimate Explorer correspondent, Mireya Mayor. "You would have thought females that want to be mated, especially over their fertile period, would be seeking out males."

Well, perhaps, in a roundabout way, they are seeking males, suggests primatologist Amy Parish.

She argues that female macaques may enhance their social position through homosexual intimacy which in turn influences breeding success. Parish says, "Taking something that's nonreproductive, like mounting another female—if it leads to control of a resource or acquisition of a resource or a good alliance partner, that could directly impact your reproductive success."

On the other hand, they could just be enjoying themselves, suggests Paul Vasey, animal behavior professor at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. "They're engaging in the behavior because it's gratifying sexually or it's sexually pleasurable," he says. "They just like it. It doesn't have any sort of adaptive payoff."

Matthew Grober, biology professor at Georgia State University, agrees, saying, "If [sex] wasn't fun, we wouldn't have any kids around. So I think that maybe Japanese macaques have taken the fun aspect of sex and really run with it."

The bonobo, an African ape closely related to humans, has an even bigger sexual appetite. Studies suggest 75 percent of bonobo sex is nonreproductive and that nearly all bonobos are bisexual. Frans de Waal, author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, calls the species a "make love, not war" primate. He believes bonobos use sex to resolve conflicts between individuals.

Other animals appear to go through a homosexual phase before they become fully mature. For instance, male dolphin calves often form temporary sexual partnerships, which scientists believe help to establish lifelong bonds. Such sexual behavior has been documented only relatively recently. Zoologists have been accused of skirting round the subject for fear of stepping into a political minefield.

"There was a lot of hiding of what was going on, I think, because people were maybe afraid that they would get into trouble by talking about it," notes de Waal. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's hard not make comparisons between humans and other animals, especially primates. The fact that homosexuality does, after all, exist in the natural world is bound to be used against people who insist such behavior is unnatural.

In the U.S., in particular, the moral debate over this issue rages on. Many on the religious right regard homosexuality as a sin. And only this month, President Bush vowed to continue his bid to ban gay marriages after the Senate blocked the proposal.

Already, cases of animal homosexuality have been cited in successful court cases brought against states like Texas, where gay sex was, until recently, illegal.

Yet scientists say we should be wary of referring to animals when considering what's acceptable in human society. For instance, infanticide, as practiced by lions and many other animals, isn't something people, gay or straight, generally approve of in humans.

Human Homosexuality

So how far can we go in using animals to help us understand human homosexuality? Robin Dunbar is a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Liverpool, England. "The bottom line is that anything that happens in other primates, and particularly other apes, is likely to have strong evolutionary continuity with what happens in humans," he said.

Dunbar says the bonobo's use of homosexual activity for social bonding is a possible example, adding, "One of the main arguments for human homosexual behavior is that it helps bond male groups together, particularly where a group of individuals are dependent on each other, as they might be in hunting or warfare."

For instance, the Spartans, in ancient Greece, encouraged homosexuality among their elite troops. "They had the not unreasonable belief that individuals would stick by and make all efforts to rescue other individuals if they had a lover relationship," Dunbar added.

Another suggestion is that homosexuality is a developmental phase people go through. He said, "This is similar to the argument of play in young animals to get their brain and muscles to work effectively and together. Off the back of this, there's the possibility you can get individuals locked into this phase for the rest of their lives as a result of the social environment they grow up in."

But he adds that homosexuality doesn't necessarily have to have a function. It could be a spin-off or by-product of something else and in itself carries no evolutionary weight."

He cites sexual gratification, which encourages procreation, as an example. "An organism is designed to maximize its motivational systems," he adds.

In other words, if the urge to have sex is strong enough it may spill over into nonreproductive sex, as suggested by the actions of the bonobos and macaques. However, as Dunbar admits, there's a long way to go before the causes of homosexuality in humans are fully understood.

He said, "Nobody's really investigated this issue thoroughly, because it's so politically sensitive. It's fair to say all possibilities are still open."