Exactly, as soon as we project our human-related names the behavior of "jumping on whatever" becomes something like "homosexual necrophilia" or "sadomasochism" or "rape" or whatever:

"The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)"

http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/docu...

or more popular:

Kees Moeliker: How a dead duck changed my life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUQLN4o63SY

or

"Kangaroo shown 'grieving' was actually trying to mate with dying female: experts"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-14/grieving-kangaroo-actu...

Even cannibalism of the partner's body during or after sex can be supported with "nature":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_cannibalism

Evolution produces everything we can imagine, and more.

Don't ever look up "traumatic insemination"...

Thanks for the suggestion, the nature is really beautiful in all the variations it devises!

"Traumatic insemination, also known as hypodermic insemination, is the mating practice in some species of invertebrates in which the male pierces the female's abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity (hemocoel)." "The process is detrimental to the female's health. It creates an open wound which impairs the female until it heals, and is susceptible to infection."

Then I have another one for you: When mating, the male spider Nephilengys malabarensis snaps off his penis and leaves it inside the female. That way he can fend off other males and also is better able to defend himself against the female that tries to eat him: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/12/male-spid...

Nature is absolutely fascinating (and makes me happy I'm a human).

> makes me happy I'm a human

Truth to be told, being human in the case of being female human but born on the wrong place, under wrong religion probably wouldn't make you happy:

Typologies of FGM

Hundreds of millions affected.

And yet you are responding to a comment using an example where one of the mating pair snaps off their genitals to make it easier to avoid being eaten by the other of the mating pair. Personally, I think that's a bit worse, and reason to prefer being human even considering the hardships that may be encountered due to birth circumstances such as gender and location.

Your points about the hardships of being human depending on birth circumstance are important, and deserve attention in general, but I don't think they're really constructive to the discussion at hand, or at least this little branch of it.

Compared with other touched topics here like "saddlebacking," (to which, surprisingly, you've posted a link to a song!?) I find this one very constructive.

My comment here involves destroyed genitals of humans by humans, certainly not a reason to be a happy human if you are among the affected, and it's hundreds of millions of them.

And it is in the branch of discussion of animals destroying their genitals as the necessary condition for reproduction. Consider that the partial destruction of genitals is also effectively necessary condition for reproduction if you are unlucky enough to be born there and female.

Saddlebagging is about adopting sexual practices adopted specifically to prevent procreation, so relevant in multiple branches of the conversation. The song establishes cultural relevance, as well as being somewhat entertaining (in my opinion).

What I thought made it non-relevant is that FGM is cultural, not genetic or a species wide aspect of our psychology (regardless of whether it affects millions). Additionally,I don't think you made a good case as to why being born as a species that has to contend with bad conditions (but I don't believe worse than the alternative) isn't preferable to being born a species that has to contend with death at every attempted mating.

In short, it felt a bit like you used FGM for impact due to it's status in our culture, not for it's relevance to the discussion at hand. It's possible I'm not seeing a connection you thought was implied there though, so feel free to expand if you feel like it.

> Saddlebagging is about adopting sexual practices adopted specifically to prevent procreation

On that level it's not different from any kind of contraception, also widely done in humanity, so not really insightful there. It's interesting to me only because it's a religious "trick," a way to do something what is formally not forbidden. Like

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/once-u...

"Once Upon A Time, The Catholic Church Decided That Beavers Were Fish"

...in order to eat their meat at the times of fasting. The rest of the article has more examples.

This article is about same-sex pair bonding, not mating. An interesting question is if homosexual pair bonding might be an evolutionary stable strategy under some circumstances.

"Bonding" in this kind of research absolutely doesn't mean the promiscuity is excluded:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

"Roughly 60% of all bonobo sexual activity occurs between two or more females."

Actually, pair-bonding and promiscuity are almost completely mutually exclusive, as used in animal behavior research. Pair-bonding implies long term attachment between two animals, often, but not necessarily, including mating. Promiscuity implies a sexual encounter without a long term bond. This article is about the former, not the latter.

They aren't many bird species that mate for "life" procriate with other mates during the actual mating season but nest with their original mate.

It seems that there are 2 nearly opposite evolutionary drives one is that long term bonding increase the likelihood of offspring survivability and the other that promiscuous mating increases the overall group genetic diversity.

Some bird species that also present same sex bonding will have single sex bonds nesting and having another female lay eggs in their nest, other species that operate under more communal care for their offspring show behavior akin to what we would call adoption.

Although this is... well... close enough to true, it is not a sufficient explainer as the animals who behave in the manner you describe account for only a very small number of species.

Most species have sex extremely conservatively, and very few are capable of the frequency and duration of sex that humans engage in.

But why can we observe same-sex pair bonding and sexual contact so frequently, even in species that don't seem particularly sexually obsessed?

> Most species have sex extremely conservatively

That's what my ex-girlfriend claimed, because she never actually observed animals behaving, "the animals are so peaceful." Then as she was in the park, she was witness of, named with the human-related names, a violent prolonged gang-rape of one female duck by the group of male ducks.

The female duck was wounded, repeatedly and observably. My girlfriend was deeply shocked.

By the way, a male duck has a 20-cm corkscrew-shaped penis and he can pull it out in a third of a second:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwjEeI2SmiU

And penises of cats are barbed, evolved and now necessary to make pain to females:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UVw7cgv36A

Ducks are notorious for having very aggressive sex. There are plenty of species which are well documented to have monogamous, long-term sexual relationships. Off the top of my head, seabirds have monogamous sexual behaviors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabird_breeding_behavior

> There are plenty of species

How much in percents is that "plenty"?

It's easy to toss qualifications, it's much harder to reasonably quantify what we research. I don't agree it's "plenty of species" (Edit: of course, in a sense that it's useful for a discussion argument, as in "majority", certainly not in a sense "an example can't be found" of course it can).

What percentage of species, or what percentage of individuals in a species? I don't know about the former, but in the latter case there are several species which are documented to form monogamous relationships with no extra-pair copulations (EPCs). That wikipedia page cites a couple of studies:

Anderson, D. J. and P. T. Boag. 2006. No extra-pair fertilization observed in Nazca Booby (Sula granti) broods. Wilson Journal of Ornithology 118:244-247.

Moreno, J., L. Boto, J. A. Fargallo, A. de Leon, and J. Potti. 2000. Absence of extra-pair fertilisations in the Chinstrap Penguin Pygoscelis antarctica. Journal of Avian Biology 31:580-583.

Lifjeld, J. T., A. M. A. Harding, F. Mehlum, and T. Oigarden. 2005. No evidence of extra-pair paternity in the Little Auk Alle alle. Journal of Avian Biology 36:484-487.

Just three kinds of birds?

Nazca Booby, Chinstrap Penguin, Little auk.

Those were just the studies I could find offhand of monogamous species with no EPCs. If you include EPCs, about 90% of birds are socially monogamous[1]. According to [2] ~25% of those species are genetically monogamous (i.e. no EPCs). Though I should mention that genetic monogamy is a pretty high bar, which humans do not pass by a long shot. Is this sufficient evidence for you?

[1]Lack, D. 1968. Ecological Adaptations for Breeding in Birds. Methuen and Company, London.

[2]Griffith, S. C. , I. P F. Owens , and K. A. Thuman . 2002. Extra-pair paternity in birds: A review of interspecific variation and adaptive function. Molecular Ecology 11:2195–2212.

> Is this sufficient evidence for you?

Sufficient if we just consider birds, of course. But what do we discuss here? It started with the

"There are plenty of species which are well documented to have monogamous relationships"

claim and all I see is birds and birds.

Edit: thanks for finally answering below my question "how much in percents is that "plenty of species"?" Your answer is "90% of birds." The rest of discussion would have been unnecessary, especially quoting some three specific birds as the answer. I also agree with yours "the average sexual behaviors across all species doesn't give you much insight."

I chose birds because it's a taxa I know well and I knew to be largely monogamous. I've shown 90% of birds are socially monogamous, and 1/6 of vertebrate species are birds, so at least 15% of all vertebrates are monogamous, and that's plenty enough for me. If you want more exact numbers feel free to look for them yourselves, but I think I've given you a pretty good starting place. For the record, I doubt you'll find anything in the existing literature which attempts to give exact percentages, mostly because it's a rather useless figure. Taking averages over species assigns equal weight to some obscure insect species on one particular island with only a couple hundred individuals to a species with a global distribution and billions of individuals. And even once you get that number, the average sexual behaviors across all species doesn't give you much insight.

0.01% would be plenty in this context.

Remember this is not a popularity contest and there are a lot of species out there. Why does behavior X happen is not asking what happens the other 99.99% of the time.

> 0.01% would be plenty in this context.

Why? What is being proved, unless we talk about majority? So we are able to find some animals that are monogamous and not violent? What then?

Like in the article, tossing "plenty" and "many" actually doesn't help for anything more than creating illusion that the behavior we like is somehow "supported" by nature.

It's not problem analyzing some behavior, the problem is unsupported "plenty" and "many."

Saying N% of species engaged in a behavior would be a meaningless statement. There are probably a few billion (real, not discovered) insect species. We will probably never discover and catalog them all genetically unless we invent nanotech before the big extinction. Insects are not relevant to this discussion; neither are mollusks, or really dumb fish, or worms, etc.. So scoping this to "a plurality of species that have some intelligence" is somewhat appropriate.

That said, this whole thread is nothing but people trying to anthropomorphize nature, so that they can pretend it's more cuddly than it actually is. There is no chemical for morality secreted by all species. There is no evolution for empathy. These are things humans create through their own intelligence, and no amount of anthropomorophized behavior will make that not the case.

> So scoping this to "a plurality of species that have some intelligence" is somewhat appropriate.

And then we come to our nearest relatives (bonobos, chimps) being both promiscuous and ready to jump on the same sex and to use that behavior as a bonding ritual.

> people trying to anthropomorphize nature, so that they can pretend it's more cuddly than it actually is

Exactly, Disney would certainly not approve Fark squirrel:

https://img.fark.net/images/mw/X.jpg

>And then we come to our nearest relatives (bonobos, chimps) being both promiscuous and ready to jump on the same sex and to use that behavior as a bonding ritual.

They also commit cannibalism, rape, murder, bullying. You can't get any morality or moral arguments out of nature.

> You can't get any morality or moral arguments out of nature.

Specifically, you can't use pure existence of some acts in the nature as an excuse or confirmation for validity of any human acts.

Still studying the nature and the dynamics of living beings can actually help us humans more understanding our own actions, it gives us a good context as we're also animals, even if that thought isn't pleasing to everybody.

Not to derail, but...

You’re presupposing a specific morality, and then rejecting other forms of morality on that basis. Alternatives are going to by definition be different. So, you need another way to judge them.

There is a biological basis for X behavior in several species. This is plenty to start looking for similarity’s and root causes.

Think of it in these terms, if one species of poisonous animal is brightly colored that says little. If several are brightly colored that's more significant.

Edit: In math you only need one counter example to disprove a theory. In science a few is generally enough.

Its easy to cherrypick examples, but at least in the mammal world being in heat for a limited time makes a lot of evolutionary sense. Humans are notorious for being horny all the time and really are an exception. Animals, in general, aren't at all like us. The GP is correct, sex in the animal world is typically conservative.

There's this historic recontexualizing of animals as being "just like us." I think that's just wrong and it leads to bad outcomes. Its only recently that we've been able to acknowledge the intelligence of octopus or crows because we were so focused on animals 'like us' which were primarily mammals. Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable to say an octopus is smarter than a dog in polite company. You would have sounded like a crazy person.

I suspect these views aren't academic but actually political. The "animals are just like us" seems to be 60's counterculture vegitariansism and the "animals fuck all the time and are gay" seems to stem from the gay rights movement to validate their position as "natural," whatever that means. In fact, I read a book about this in the 90s and the thesis was just that. It was a fairly popular book.

Your penis design doesn't really help your argument. A hard to remove penis means a higher chance of pregnancy. Humans don't have this probably because we have sex so often, but for animals with a short heat period its very important to fertilize those eggs on the first try. Also, animals are not as lingual or culturally complex like humans so the barb is how the male controls the female. In human society we do this too via cultural baggage, male domination, marriage norms, dating norms, one-sided social pressure, and sometimes the outright threat of violence or rape. So the idea that penis barbs are these awful things is questionable compared to the alternatives.

Lastly, one of the big issues with repairing the damage of human encroachment into wildlife areas is that we can't just get animal populations back up easily. They're not used to smaller mating populations, less territory, less younger and more viable mates, etc and their sexual habits reflect that. Pandas are an extreme example, but this issue happens with most animals. They can't just magically become as promiscuous as humans. It would be nice if they could, but its just not in the cards and that's going to lead to issues like extinction down the line for many of today's endangered species and already has happened for so many more.

'There's this historic recontexualizing of animals as being "just like us."'

I don't know. In my opinion, is not that "they are like us" but that "we are one of them". We are animals. In this context, to pretend to separate animal behavior from human behavior is what is "just wrong and leads to bad outcomes".

The singular behaviors of humans are not more singular that other animals. Why to focus in "being horny all the time" and not in eating the mate after copulation?. This is a political decision too, a kind of human chauvinism.

Just to be clear, I don't say that there is nothing special about humans, but we have to see in the context of what we are, another animal that have evolved in a curious way. In my opinion, this category separation is the wrong way to think about the subject.

> Animals, in general, aren't at all like us. The GP is correct, sex in the animal world is typically conservative.

Please name percentage that supports your "typically" claim. It depends what you want to count.

If we count our closest relatives, they are bonobos and chimps.

Bonobos:

http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/bonobos-have-sex-...

"Bonobos Have Lots of Sex, Are Awesome, May Hold Key to Our Past"

Chimps:

http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/chimpanzee/beha...

"The majority of chimpanzee reproductive behavior is promiscuous, with females mating with multiple males opportunistically during estrus, though the majority of copulation occurs during the 10-day period of maximal tumescence (Goodall 1986)."

The observations of Goodall were disputed by some stupid male "scientist" who claimed that she "projects her values to chimpanzees." But she observed the behavior in the nature, documented it and published. He was the one who "projected."

100% of our closest relatives are provably promiscuous.

And some of them do copulate with the same sex too.

Except the frequency there is compared to other animals not humans. The bonobo example is a little overplayed. I don't consider 'sexually greeting' each other by grabbing assess to be on the same page as sex. That's not sex. You can't impregnate a female by grabbing.

Also, having lots of sex in a 10 day period is impressive, but humans don't have a 10 day heat period. They're in heat all the time. Its not really comparable.

I think we can split hairs all day, but I don't think its controversial to say that animal mating and human mating evolved in very different ways. Obviously our closest relatives in the animal kingdom will be most like us, but even they have heat periods.

> That's not sex. You can't impregnate a female by grabbing.

The whole point here is that sex != reproduction. IE social sex constructs, homosexuality, conflict resolution through sex, and just recreation via sex.

> Also, having lots of sex in a 10 day period is impressive, but humans don't have a 10 day heat period. They're in heat all the time. Its not really comparable.

It's true that humans are available for sex all the time - a claim no other mammal can make as I understand it - but chimps and bonobos are also available for sex far more often than they are in a viable reproductive state.

Sexual swelling in bonobos, for example, is almost consistent throughout the cycle.

> The bonobo example is a little overplayed.

No:

> I don't consider 'sexually greeting' each other by grabbing assess to be on the same page as sex.

They actually do greetings by involving their reproduction organs.

"Genito-genital rubbing of bonobo females"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdeAJUxJ7gg

> but humans don't have a 10 day heat period. They're in heat all the time.

Bonobos and chimps don't have too. They do make sex all the time. Google "concealed ovulation." That's the evolved mechanism where female never signals when it actually ovulates. And it's present by bonobos.

Well...the conservative nature is mostly cause they haven't discovered the internet yet. Zuckerberg is working on it with drones over the Serengeti and such.

That's kind of reductive, and I wonder if you read the article. The goose example is a long-term pairing and not just a roll in the hay. Some people might find your comment a bit offensive.

I have read it, it's almost exclusively about some geese, but the title is "So Many Animals."

Actually "many" animals aren't choosy, having no problem jumping on the same sex or even corpses or non-living objects, and don't make long-term unbreakable bonds. There are enough links here in responses.

Honestly, have you never had a male dog trying to copulate with your leg?

> Honestly, have you never had a male dog trying to copulate with your leg?

Having trained my four dogs I do not have this issue. I believe they are not copulating but, trying to establish dominance. I'm not sure that particular behavior is proof that they will hump anything. My friend had a female poodle who used to hump furry toys and she wasn't rubbing her parts on it. I think she was small and felt like a boss in doing it.

> Having trained my four dogs I do not have this issue.

What happens when they aren't trained against? How far would they go? I claim the untreated and unneutered males would actually ejaculate.

Personally having been raised going to dog shows and multiple people in my family owning grooming shops I've never seen a dog ejaculate. I've seen many untrained dogs humping people's legs though.

> I've seen many untrained dogs humping people's legs though.

Do people in these situations let dogs do this as long the dogs would prefer is the real question.

Pairing and bonding is different that rubbing your genitals up against something. Homosexuality is not defined as "ambivalence about what you have sex with"

Again, "bonding" in this kind of research absolutely doesn't mean the promiscuity is excluded. See my other comment for link.

Note that you just discarded a honest sex act of a dog as just "rubbing genitals"? So when is a sex act sex act and when it's "just rubbing"? Is licking genitals, what dogs do, a sexual act? Was Clinton actually right, what he had with Monica was not even sexual?

If the facts don't happen to conform to the narrative, offense is meaningless.

I suspect it was not about facts, but about my choice of words. I was going for a Blue Velvet reference.

I've watched it as it premiered but I haven't remembered that line. I guess the concept of "anything that moves" wasn't shocking for my perception, the unexpectedly found cut ear in the grass, however...

Dennis Hopper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7NitmzzZX8

Looking at your HN handle, I guess you've discovered the film at the time of Twin Peaks, if it was at the time it was premiered, you've had a hard childhood.

Many geese are going to find it offensive too.

> Some people might find your comment a bit offensive.

sigh..

Given that it's the most upvoted post, evidently quite a few people here agree with the extremely rational, thought-out and scientific argument that homosexuality is just a symptom of "fucking anything".

No, the argument is "you can find any imaginable sexual behavior in the animal kingdom, and even what you would never imagine, don't project to animals human constructs."

First, thanks for replying, rather than simply downvoting.

That isn't what the post says. The post says, literally:

[Why Are So Many Animals Homosexual?] "Because some animals fuck anything that moves and doesn't".

Meaning homosexuality is a symptom, consequence or by-product of "fucking anything".

As to what you said:

> you can find any imaginable sexual behavior in the animal kingdom, and even what you would never imagine, don't project to animals human constructs.

If we can find any imaginable sexual behaviour (for example, homosexuality) in the animal kingdom, how is any imaginable sexual behaviour (for example, homosexuality) a "human construct"?

> That isn't what the post says.

No, literally, you've cherry picked the part, the post is much more nuanced:

"Because some animals fuck anything that moves and doesn't, including dead animals[1] and other species[2]. Not sure if applying human categories such as "homosexual" to non-human animals is helpful, though."

> If we can find any imaginable sexual behaviour (for example, homosexuality) in the animal kingdom, how is any imaginable sexual behaviour (for example, homosexuality) a "human construct"?

The behavior is of course not a human construct. Using animal behavior to prove any human practice is, because any practice can be supported that way. Just like the post you didn't quote fully also tries to suggest and exactly what I attempted to summarize, even if it can be better worded, for what I'm ready to apologize.

the article is more about pair bonding than just sex.

People still have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that same-gender attraction (at least in humans) is about more than sex.

... and in the lifelong pair-bonded geese who were the major first example in TFA.

I don't think that's the claim. I think the claim is that what typically call homosexuality involves pair bonding and sex.

That's not always the case. Personally, I lean toward bisexual homoromantic. This kind of split attraction is probably more common than it seems, but we didn't have language or a concept for it until recently. I know several people who are asexual and have various romantic orientations.

Your objection to the term is equally as cultured as the application you think we should avoid.

Exactly. I can't help but feel that this is just modern day projection for political purposes.

Absolutely, a recent recording of an iTunes U course had a professor commenting on the projection of homosexuality in ancient scripts where a Roman Emperor had an appreciation for a male individual. The professor noted that a number of professors wanted to label the relationship homosexual, but he disagreed and noted that other types of relationships exist.

That being said, Hans Hermann von Katte and Friedrich the 2nd were lovers.

Surely it's simply a rebuttal to people who argue against homosexuality, and gay people, by claiming same-sex behaviour is "unnatural" and that animals don't exhibit it. (A recent example being Manny Pacquiao, which may have influenced the timing of this article.)

Attempts from both sides of the argument are politicized and misguided. There's no need to argue from the standpoint that "animals do it/ don't do it." There are plenty of things animals do that we don't. We're not animals and we should leave the poor animals out of our politics.

I want a variety of options for dealing with people who aren't persuaded by "why do you even care though" or "love is love."

I logged in after a year to reply to this comment. That was just hilarious. Kudos on the sources.