why do animals exhibit homosexuality?

Question

i am asking this from a strictly SCIENTIFIC/zoologist/animal behaviorist standpoint....the main drive of animals is to successfully get their genes into the next generation and increase fitness, while decreasing costs. homosexuality would actually increase energy costs, and therefore decrease total fitness. why then do some animals exhibit homosexuality?

Answer 1

Sometimes it -is- sexuality... and sometimes it isn't.

In some cases its just a particular kind of "being friendly" which assists bonding between members of a group... especially when that group is pretty much exclusively of a particular gender. In such situations, despite interaction between sexual 'portions' of the entities in question, there is nothing inherantly sexual intended.

And then again... sometimes it is sexual.
Studies with rams have shown that some rams will actually preferentially choose other rams to try and mate with ... and stranger still, the difference in the homosexual rams actually shows up on a brain-scan. They are actually chemically different in the brain...

Why though?
If you're questioning the causality that would lead to it... and moreover why, considering it inhibits actual reproduction, it has managed to persist and not been eradicated by natural selection... I'd have to say that its probably a very simple change in portions of our genome that determine sexual attraction dependant on gender... and that somehow a male has ended up with aspects (such as pheromone recognition) that are only meant to be expressed in females... or vice versa. Its a simple enough thing to go wrong....
I mean... there may or may not be an actual genetic reason for it. That is to say there might possibly be genes that cause homosexuality as opposed to heterosexuality... BUT natural selection should theoretically eradicate such things from population due to the tendency of homosexuals not to... y'know... be able to breed with those they have a preference toward. Changes are its actually a simple 'slip' that happens during very early development... with a chemical being in a different place to usual at a particular time... causing one aspect of cognitive functioning to develop differently.... hence different pheromone recognition or whatever.
One must remember that the sex-determination process is a fairly dodgy one at best, and its hardly surprising that while selecting the right sex might not be difficult, getting ALL the aspects of that sex perfectly matched is sometimes too much to ask for.

No offence to homosexuals of course.
I wouldn't want to make them feel like I'm calling them mistakes as humans... merely from a Neo-Darwinistic point of view as reproductive animals.

Answer 2

Your confusing the adaption, with the means to the adaption. Don't you think contraception would increase costs, as you put it?The means to reproduction is sex and sex feels good for a reason. So you need to separate the adaption, reproduction, from the means, good feeling sex, to understand a possible explanation for animals exhibiting homosexuality.

Answer 3

I think you're starting with a faulty thesis. Who defines what the "main drive of animals" is? I think animals engage in homosexuality for the same reasons that people do -- emotional fulfilment, sexual gratification, recreation, and a whole lot of other factors that vary from individual to individual.

Answer 4

I once read that homosexuality in animals are caused by an increased production of the hormone serotonin, but that was in 1996.

Answer 5

sure do, Discovery had an hour documentary on it, totally bizarre, giraffes, monkeys, pretty much every type of beast. Seemed to be strictly a release, not a mating for any other purpose.

Answer 6

How do you know what animals are thinking. Maybe their main drive is to live its own life trying to survive.

Answer 7

when there is an all male population and there are no females there is still the sexual drive just no where to vent it.... that's usually the only reason that the homosexuality will be prevailant in male populations....