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Gay Penguins of Australia
- irrational 8y agoIf we were on Reddit there would already be 1000 comments referencing the TV show Parks and Recreation.
- baitedflame 8y agoIf we were on HN, we’d be talking about technology.
- alexandercrohde 8y agoI'm very curious if this stems from the ubiquitous endocrine disruptors in the environment. Obviously in penguins the trait would be selected against very hard.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- brad0 8y agoI’m confused, you’re saying that they’re potentially gay because of environment? Hasn’t there been examples of gay animals and people for thousands of years?
- zozbot123 8y ago"Gay" behavior in animals is actually quite common. According to experts, it's often explainable as reuse of sexual behavior as a dominance display - but then again, plenty of perfectly "ordinary" sexual behavior is closely related to dominance displays.
- vivekd 8y agoNo. There have been examples of same sex behavior in animals as dominance displays but no gay animals the way it is with humans who are exclusive ly attracted to the same sex. That sort of thing would be selected against by natural selection. BBC has a great article on this topic http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150206-are-there-any-homosexual-animals http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150206-are-there-any-homose...
- chillacy 8y agoOne of the theories is that homosexuality is an evolutionary advantage in humans because gay siblings can forgo having children and help raise their family’s children, increasing community fitness. That makes sense to me but if it’s also common in penguins, I imagine it would either have an entirely different selection pressure or both come from a different mechanism.