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Gallery: Can Animals Really Be Gay?

Posted 10.5.11 at 2:02 pm 5 Comments

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Squid

Octopoteuthis deletron isn’t picky. Combing through ROV video footage of the cephalopods taken over the last two decades, researchers found evidence of same-sex mating behaviors just as often as opposite-sex mating. For these invertebrates, observed 1,300 to 2,600 feet below the surface, mating means shooting a packet of sperm-containing sacs onto a partner. Sperm enters through the skin and is stored inside the female’s body until fertilization.

Of the 39 squid whose sex could be identified on the videos, nine males and 10 females had sperm sacs attached to their bodies. But the finding doesn’t make some male squid gay or bi, lead author Hendrik Hoving told the New York Times. Rather than preferring males over females, or seeking out both equally, the squid simply take a literal shot in the dark in hopes of scoring a viable mate. “Apparently, the costs involved in losing sperm to another male are smaller than the costs of developing sex discrimination and courtship, or of not mating at all,” the study authors wrote.

(The pictured squid is not O. deletron.)

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5 Comments

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zrzzz

10/05/11 at 11:28 pm

Why can't people just be what they are. Why do they need a label? This person's gay, that person's bi, that person likes to dress up in a skin suit made out of dead hookers. Just get over it already.

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ludwig

10/06/11 at 7:21 pm

ludwig
OF course, Animals can be gay and a good examples of this are we Humans (Homo sapiens) who are animals of the Mammalian class. Homosexuality occurs in nearly all the animial and plant Kingdoms and in some instances---as the Earthworm---no reproduction can take place without a same sex coition involved. Oysters also can be gay but they also have the ability to change sex and reproduce. Nearly all Apes and Monkey classes engage in homosexual behaviors. Homosexuality in humans in not solely about sex--it is about loving one of the same sex just as someone else may love the opposite sex.

Now lets leave all the myths of religion out of this becaue religion does not seek truth as it claims while science does. Religion likes to cling to falsehoods in the face of truth and is adamant is doing so ---example Galileo being threatened with being burned at the stake because he told the truth--that the Sun not the Earth is the center of our solar system. Religion claims that Heaven is in the sky --we know it is not becaue we have sent Rockets to outer space. If being a gay person is so bad then why does God keep creating them and heterosexual parents having them? If one does not wish to procreate or simply not able to then why not engage in same sex relations and same sex marriages?

Being Gay is not a moral question or a matter of choice but is the way 10% of all humans are made genetically and at the molecular biological state and while I do not have percentages for the plant and animal kingdom --it is also they way that many other creatures are made. IF being gay were a choice; why would anyone want to be victimized by the anti-gay factions of this world who are so homophobic?

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fdgerher

10/07/11 at 9:55 pm

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DarkHorseSki

10/11/11 at 12:34 pm

Leave it to the dolphins to reinterpret the definition of "blowhole". It would be very curious to know which of these species demonstrate heterosexual "oral" (blowhole) or anal sex. It would provide much to the interpretation of what is being described in these vignettes.

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rog1515

10/18/11 at 11:07 am

"if the same animals always chose the same sex" then it would have validity for this question. for instance the deep water squid: it has the best chance to reproduce the more of it's genetic material is out there. so i would say that this is more about the law of averages then if they are gay or not.

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