 | We live in such a diverse and beautiful world, but until recently, I was unaware that infinite variety included multiple forms of sexual coupling and gender expression among our more-than-human cousins. I find this fascinating as a speculative fiction writer—imagine a world of communal parenting and fluid gender expression. Turns out, our fellow animals live in just such a world. My primary resources in this journey were the fabulous Evolution's Rainbow (reviewed separately) and Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl, PhD. Unless noted otherwise, the following quotes are all taken from Bagemihl’s excellent book: |
“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. Many creatures are ‘transgendered,’ crossing or combining characteristics of both males and females in their appearance or behavior.”
 | Widespread "homosexuality" among animals can take the form of male-male or female-female genital (or anal) penetration, or “pelvic thrusting and rubbing the genitals on the rump of the other animal.” Nearly 40% of mammals and birds engaging in same-sex mating also engage in courtship behavior. “Perhaps most interesting are those creatures that have a special courtship pattern found only in homosexual interactions. Male ostriches, for example, perform a unique ‘pirouette dance’ only when courting other males, while female Rhesus macaques engage in courtship games such as ‘hide-and-seek’ that are unique to lesbian interactions. … Male lions ‘head-rub’ and roll around with each other before having sex together.” |
Polyamory is natural among more-than-human animals. “Spinner Dolphins … participate in “wuzzles”—group sessions of mutual caressing and sexual activity (both same-sex and opposite-sex)—while West Indian manatees have a similar sort of “free-for-all” group activity known as cavorting. Group sex and courting behavior occurs in over twenty five species “involving anywhere from three or four (giraffes, lions) to six or more (bowhead whales, mountain sheep) partners.”
 | “Gorilla babies grow up in mixed-sex, polygamous groups where their mothers may have lesbian interactions with each other, while Pukeko [birds] and Acorn woodpeckers live and raise their young in communal breeding groups where many, if not all, group members engage in courtship and sexual activities with one another (both same-sex and opposite-sex)." "Same-sex trios of male Greylag geese or female Grizzly bears are sometimes known as triumvirates, while bisexual (and heterosexual) trios in Flamingos are called triads.” Among primates, “female bonobos and Rhesus macaques, for instance, may have sexual relationships with several different ‘favorite’ partners or consorts (of both sexes).” |
There are also many documented cases of pair or individual masturbation including: “diddling (fondling of the penis and scrotum) in male Savanna baboons. Bottlenose dolphins and West Indian manatees rub another male’s penis with their flippers. Mutual masturbation in female and male macaques. ‘Rump-rubbing’ and ‘bump-rump’ among bonobos and chimpanzees. Mutual genital stimulation using trunks in female elephants, and anal stimulation and penetration with fingers by male chimpanzees, siamangs, and macaques. … Many birds masturbate by mounting and copulating with tufts of grass, leaves, or mounds of earth.”
 | In fact, nonprocreative sexual activity "frequently constitutes a significant portion of all sexual behavior.” These acts include “various forms of oral sex … stimulation of a partner’s genitals with the hands or other appendages (such as flippers), including vaginal stimulation (in primates); anal stimulation, penetration with fingers or oral-anal contact (orangutans), rump-rubbing…and even heterosexual anal intercourse (in orangutans).” |
“In many animals with communal breeding systems, only one or two individuals in each group reproduce while the others are nonbreeders; many of the latter help…raise the young, but in a few species…nonbreeders do not contribute.”
 | “Virtually every animal population includes non-breeding individuals. There is a tendency to regard the urge to procreate among animals as instinctual, all-pervasive, and unstoppable. … Many non-breeding animals are still sexually active; on the other hand, celibacy, abstinence, and other kinds of asexuality are also prevalent. ... Among white-handed gibbons, males and females are thought to interact sexually with each other every two years or so, while Siamang females often space their pregnancies by a couple of years, turning over parental duties to males while they assume leadership roles.” |
There is also a wide range of gender expression in the more-than-human world: “Animals with females that become males, animals with no males at all, animals that are both male and female simultaneously, animals where males resemble females, animals where females court other females and males court other males … Many animals live without two distinct genders or with multiple genders.”
 | Organisms such as shrimp and oysters “undergo complete reversals of their sex at some stage in their lives. … more than fifty species of parrot fishes, wrasses, groupers, angelfishes, and other species are transsexual. In all such cases, the reproductive organs of the fish undergo a complete reversal. What were once fully functioning ovaries, for example, become fully functioning testes, and the formerly female fish is able to mate and reproduce as a male.” |
“In addition to nontranssexual males and females, some individuals [of lantern fish] are hermaphrodites (both male and female at the same time) and others are secondary (transsexual) males, while a few individuals exhibit courtship and mating patterns typical of the opposite sex (directed toward individuals of the same sex).”
 | Transgender animals that assume "opposite" sex roles: "transgender animals sometimes have high status in a population (e.g., Savanna baboons) or are more successful than other animals at obtaining sexual partners (e.g., red deer, common garter snakes).” On the other hand, white-tail deer “velvet-horns” (individuals who combine both male and female characteristics) are hounded by nontransgendered deer of all ages and sexes in “highly aggressive attacks” so that “velvet horns tend to associate only with other velvet horns.” |
Male Bighorn sheep spend much of their lives in "bachelor" groups where they routinely mount each other. “A small percentage of male [Bighorn sheep] are behavioral transvestites: they remain in female herds year-round and also mimic female behavior patterns. Such males generally refuse to allow other males to mount them, just the way females do. Thus, among Bighorn sheep, being mounted by a male is a typically “masculine” activity, while refusal of such mounting is a typically “feminine” behavior. Males who mimic females specifically avoid homosexuality.”
 | New Guinea traditions attribute androgynous and sex-transforming characteristics to the cassowary, a “mammal-like bird.” Human representatives of the cassowary ritually enact its transgender characteristics and “these transgendered and nonreproductive ‘animal-people’ are symbols of fertility, fecundity, and growth—corporeal manifestations of what one cassowary man-woman calls ‘the hidden secret of androgyny ... inside the living center of the life force.’ ” Other transgendered shamans are common among a number of cultures from the Siberian arctic to the American southwest to the great plains. |
Intersex animals: There are as many as ten to twenty percent of ‘masculinized females’ in wild populations of grizzly, black, and polar bears. These animals have the internal reproductive anatomy of a female combined with portions of the external genitals of a male, including ‘penislike’ organs. … Intersexual animals that combine male and female sex organs … also occur spontaneously in other mammals…primates, whales & dolphins, marsupials, and rodents.”
 | Although biologists historically assessed ecosystems by their limitations, scientists are now studying how abundance and excess drive natural systems. Life on Earth is characterized by “the super-abundance of biochemical energy” freely provided by our sun. “The challenge confronting life is not scarcity, but excess—what to do with all this extra energy.” |
A related idea is biodiversity, the “principle that the vitality of a biological system is a direct consequence of the diversity it contains … as diversity increases, so does stability and resilience. … Every individual, every behavior … comprising 1% or 99% of the population—has a part to play.”
“Seen in this light, [gender diversity], homosexuality and nonreproductive heterosexuality are ‘expected’ occurrences—they are one manifestation of an overall ‘extravagance’ of biological systems that has many other expressions. … an affirmation of nature’s plurality, strength, and wholeness.”
“Seen in this light, [gender diversity], homosexuality and nonreproductive heterosexuality are ‘expected’ occurrences—they are one manifestation of an overall ‘extravagance’ of biological systems that has many other expressions. … an affirmation of nature’s plurality, strength, and wholeness.”
Read more about gender and sexual diversity:
Nonfiction: Evolution’s Rainbow; Genderqueer Gods, Lesbian Lizards
Read more about our natural world: If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, The Forest Unseen, The Light Eaters, An Immense World, The Hidden Life of Trees, The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog
Read novels with gender-diverse characters: The Four Profound Weaves, Light from Uncommon Stars,
The Bruising of Qilwa, Sistersong, Spear, Most Ardently
Nonfiction: Evolution’s Rainbow; Genderqueer Gods, Lesbian Lizards
Read more about our natural world: If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, The Forest Unseen, The Light Eaters, An Immense World, The Hidden Life of Trees, The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog
Read novels with gender-diverse characters: The Four Profound Weaves, Light from Uncommon Stars,
The Bruising of Qilwa, Sistersong, Spear, Most Ardently
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