Re:Why Are So Many Animals Homosexual?
by openasocket on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @11:14AM
(#11167808)
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.
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."