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Amid this incredible variety of different patterns, one thing is certain: the animal kingdom is most definitely not just heterosexual. Many creatures are "transgendered," crossing or combining characteristics of both males and females in their appearance or behavior. Other animals regularly have partners of both sexes, and some even live in communal groups where sexual activity is common among all members, male and female. Animals of the same sex build nests and homes together, and many homosexual pairs raise young without members of the opposite sex. Females form long-lasting pair-bonds-or maybe just meet briefly for sex, rolling in passionate embraces or mounting one another. Males caress and kiss each other, showing tenderness and affection toward one another rather than just hostility and aggression.
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On every continent, animals of the same sex seek each other out and have probably been doing so for millions of years.3 They court each other, using intricate and beautiful mating dances that are the result of eons of evolution. From the Southeastern Blueberry Bee of the United States to more than 130 different bird species worldwide, the "birds and the bees," literally, are queer.2 The world is, indeed, teeming with homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered creatures of every stripe and feather. Haldane was not (necessarily) referring to homosexuality when he spoke of the "queerness" of the natural world, little did he know how accurate his statement would turn out to be. Circling and prancing around her partner, a female antelope courts another female in an ageless, elegant ritual staged on the African savanna.Īlthough biologist J. Tiny midges swarm above a bleak tundra of northern Europe, a whirlwind of mating activity as males couple with each other in midair. In a protected New Zealand inlet, a pair of female gulls-mated for life-tend their chicks together. A herd of deer picks its way cautiously through a semidesert scrub of Texas, each animal simultaneously male but not-quite-male, with half-developed, velvety antlers and diminutive, fine-boned proportions. Drifting off to sleep, two male monkeys lie gently in each other's arms, cradled by one of the ancient jungles of Asia. A whale glides through the dark and icy waters of the Arctic, then surges toward the surface in a playful frenzy of churning water and splashing, her fins and tail caressing another female. In the dimly lit undergrowth of a Central American rain forest, jewel-like male hummingbirds flit through the vegetation, pausing briefly to mate now with a male, now with a female. The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.