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Another essential book for many people on this site is Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberence: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, St. Martin's Press, 1999. I'll bet many of you didn't know so many animals were gay and lesbian; relationships with one male and one female are not all that common among most mammals and birds. There are lots of rapes in some species (like mallard ducks), something of interest to BDSM people. There are also a few transgenders among animals, either those looking like neither sex (like velvet-horn whitetail deer), or those just behaving like the opposite sex (like a class of male bighorn sheep that act like females and hang out with females all the time -- but don't have sex with the females). I found it funny that PBS lin 2024 broadast a Ken Burns 6-hour documentary on preservation of bison, but didn't have time to once mention that male bison are primarily gay, something many native Americans knew but European settlers never figured out. Since the documentary focused on efforts to preseve herds starting in the late 19th century, putting all the males and females together in one herd as was often done doesn't work too well when most males are gay almost all the time. |
