Cute Gay Animals

Today I feel like talking about homosexual tendencies in animals. Just because I think more people should know about them, it's pretty cute.

The penguins in the picture above are the male chinstrap penguins Squawk and Milou of the New York Central Park Zoo, just one example of same-sex courtship among animals. This is hardly the first time we've seen this, there were also the male penguins Roy and Silo who took a strong liking to each other and showed the classic signs of penguin lurrrve whilst also completely dismissing the attention of female penguins. They were also determined to "adopt" a chick as their own, as a lot of same-sex animal couples do.

"At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own."

Cute, huh? Of course it doesn't stop with penguins. 8% of male lion and ram sexual interaction is males mounting other males.

45% of male elephants, both African and Asian, will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other's mouths. Male elephants, who often live apart from the general herd, often form "companionships", consisting of an older individual and one or sometimes two younger, attendant males with sexual behaviour being an important part of the social dynamic. Unlike heterosexual relations in elephants which are fleeting, homosexual relations may last for many years. Quite sweet isn't it, how homosexual relationships between elephants last a lot longer than heterosexual ones?

Experts estimate that at least 90% of giraffe sex that happens is male-male sex and 1% is female-female, leaving only about 9% of giraffe sex heterosexual and actually reproductive.

Maybe one day I'll write another blog about the strange sexual habits of giraffes, they're quite disgusting, but that's for another time I think. If we can take any lesson from this, it's that being gay is totally natural. I seriously doubt these animals are actively choosing to rebel against the system and be different.