List of mammals displaying homosexual behavior

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Giraffes in Kenya; giraffes have been called "especially gay" for often engaging in same-sex sexual behavior more than male-female (heterosexual) sex.

For these mammals, there is documented evidence of homosexual behavior of one or more of the following kinds: sexual behavior, courtship, affection, pair bonding, or parenting.

Bruce Bagemihl writes that the presence of same-sex sexual behavior was not officially observed on a large scale until the 1990s due to possible observer bias caused by social attitudes towards LGBT people making homosexuality in animals a taboo subject. He devotes three chapters; Two Hundred Years at Looking at Homosexual Wildlife, Explaining (Away) Animal Homosexuality and Not For Breeding Only in his 1999 book Biological Exuberance to the "documentation of systematic prejudices" where he notes "the present ignorance of biology lies precisely in its single-minded attempt to find reproductive (or other) "explanations" for homosexuality, transgender, and non-procreative and alternative heterosexualities. Petter Bøckman, academic adviser for the Against Nature? exhibit stated "[M]any researchers have described homosexuality as something altogether different from sex. They must realise that animals can have sex with who they will, when they will and without consideration to a researcher's ethical principles". Homosexual behavior is found amongst social birds and mammals, particularly the sea mammals and the primates.

Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species and the motivations for and implications of their behaviors have yet to be fully understood. Bagemihl's research shows that homosexual behavior, not necessarily sexual activity, has been documented in about 500 species as of 1999, ranging from primates to gut worms. Homosexuality in animals is seen as controversial by some social conservatives because it asserts the naturalness of homosexuality in humans, while others counter that it has no implications and is nonsensical to equate animal behavior to morality. On the other hand, social liberals and many gay people believe homosexuality is natural, and therefore find the existence of homosexual sex in animals unsurprising. Animal preference and motivation is always inferred from behavior. Thus homosexual behavior has been given a number of terms over the years. The correct usage of the term homosexual is that an animal exhibits homosexual behavior, however this article conforms to the usage by modern research applying the term homosexuality to all sexual behavior (copulation, genital stimulation, mating games and sexual display behavior) between animals of the same sex.

This list is part of a larger list of animals displaying homosexual behavior including birds, insects, fish etc.

Selected images

• Macaques à bonnet petits.jpg

  Male bonnet macaques, similar to the youthful ones pictured, "give each other hand-jobs and sometimes eat the resulting semen" although using "hand-job" can be seen as overly anthropomorphic.

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  Ugandan kob - "Female kob perform oral sex on each other and even stroke each other's vulvas with their forelegs. They may exhibit urolagnia during sex, one female will urinate while the other sticks her nose in the stream."

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  "Elevated levels of testosterone in utero" increases aggressiveness and both male and female spotted hyenas mount submissive same-sex members who likely have lower levels of testosterone from their mothers.

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  In "slip-and-slide" orgies, groups of male grey whales, one of the oldest species of mammals, roll in the ocean rubbing their bellies against each other so that their genitals are touching.

Mammals

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See also

• Homosexual behavior in animals#Mammals
• Animal sexual behavior#Mammals
• List of birds displaying homosexual behavior

See also

• Against Nature?, an exhibit at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum that took place until 19 August 2007.
• Anthropomorphism
• Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior
• Biodiversity
• Bioethics
• Biology and sexual orientation
• Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a branch of zoology; cognitive ethology fuses cognitive science and classical ethology to observe animals under more-or-less natural conditions
• Evolutionary biology
• Homosexual behavior in animals#Birds
• Innate bisexuality
• Sexual selection

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