This proves animals don’t fall for peer pressure like some humans do.
Source

Six of the male penguins formed couples among themselves

Six gay penguins at a German zoo have continued their refusal to mate with females of the species flown in from Sweden in 2005, zoo authorities say.

On Wednesday, Heike Kueck, the zoo's director, said the problem was that the female Humboldt penguins have proven too shy in their advances.


Kueck said: "The Swedes will not make the first move."


The females were flown in last year in a bid to bring the males to mate and help save the Humboldt species from extinction.


Kueck said last year she was optimistic the initiative would be successful because zoo keepers had noticed that at one point a female penguin had managed to cause a couple of males to "separate".


The Bremerhaven Zoo in northern Germany, has 10 male penguins of which six have shown strong signs of preferring male company and formed couples among themselves.


Gay rights


The initiative to "turn" the penguins and make them mate had prompted a furious response from gay rights groups.


"The Swedes will not make the first move"

Heike Kueck,
Bremerhaven Zoo director
In a statement posted on its internet website, the zoo on Wednesday sought to defend itself from fresh criticism.


The statement said: "We will be delighted if the penguins form even one heterosexual couple and manage to produce first an egg, and then a little one.


"But of course we accept the male couples that have formed and we are not trying to enforce heterosexuality, as we were accused of doing last year."
AFP

I'm all for critters being gay when they're not also endangered. Those penguins need to breed if they want to survive!

That being said, I also think that the attempts to "turn" the penguins will probably be as futile as attempts to "turn" people.

The best solution, I'd say, would be to artificially inseminate the females.

>>That being said, I also think that the attempts to "turn"
>>the penguins will probably be as futile as attempts
>>to "turn" people.

That's why I'm surprised at the angry response that's allegedly coming from the gay lib group. You'd think they'd take the opportunity to say "See? It occurs in nature, and furthermore you can't change an individual organism."

What's next? Is R.A.I.N. going to accuse horse breeders of setting up rape?

Gay animals are pretty much old news, and expected; but, I got a chuckle out of that story. Just inseminate the gal and leave it alone.

So I'm going to add this, I think that it is funny. Also because of how the stories are a like. I have two cats. One is a couple of years older. I got them both at the shelter; one was a kitten around ten months old. They are both males, at some point the kitten decided to start suckling on my male cat. Must have been quite often because I noticed my male cat has lost some fur around his nipples. I guess if it’s consensual, whatever. My older male cat no longer wants to put up with it, and is seeing it as being harassing. Also the younger cat is larger then him. So now I discourage the behavior. Guessing the younger cat must have gotten taken away from its mother too soon. I feel a bit silly about it to begin with. Now I feel even sillier protecting the right of my older cat to be left alone.

Gay penguins and sexual assaulted cats, man this thread is a bit amusing, almost seems like a bad joke.

This morning, driving to work I heard on the radio a mock review of a movie “March of the gay penguins”. Now I understand the joke!

Some animals would refuse to have babies in captivity. Some just won’t mate while others reproduce, but eat their cubs as soon as they are born. I guess it's a natural response to being out of their natural environment.

"...out of their natural environment."

We also have two male cats, that at the time we got them were not yet fixed. We actually didn't even think about having them fixed until the younger one started spraying everything in the house. Not a fun time.

My point...

The older one, driven by his natural urges, was pestering the hell out of the younger one as if he was a female. Chasing him around trying to "get" him. After months of this, the younger one just gave up and submitted. I guess they both had a good time of it. Whatever.

We have humorously referred to this as the "prison syndrome" and I'm sure that this can be observed in many captive animals that are sexually segregated. Its at least so far documented in cats, penguins and people.

Lol, go gay penguins!

I neved heard of gay cats before... but I have a Fox Terrier that insists on humping other male dogs and ignores the females.

Is his name Sparky?

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Even political correctness for penquins?! Give me a break. How about the fact that what they are doing is trying to populate a particular species. Is there something wrong with that?

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Why do human beings feel the need to save a species from natural extinction? It really is more an effort to artificially keep the natural world in some imagined state of equilibrium that doesn't exist. It's just fine if this species ceases to be. It is the way of nature.

Applying this to human beings, we'd readily see it as a fallicy. "Let the weak perish and the stupid bring about their own demise", we Satanists love to say. Why not apply the same to other species. If they don't want to mate, so be it. It has nothing to do with rights. It has everything to do with the natural order of things. Or perhaps it's natural for humans to interfere in everything. But is it desireable?

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We have humorously referred to this as the "prison syndrome" and I'm sure that this can be observed in many captive animals that are sexually segregated. Its at least so far documented in cats, penguins and people.

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This isn't the case. Homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and all the rest have been observed in the wild world-wide. Unlike humans, "prison syndrome" doesn't come into play with non-human animals because they are acting on sheer instinct not other mental/emotional processes that humans are subject to.

Pick up a copy of Biological Exhuberance (Bruce Bagemihl, author). It is a textbook compilation of over 200 years worth of scientific documentation on animal sexuality. It dispells many of the myths regarding animal sexuality.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I often make this point to people, although it naturally makes Me unpopular with conservationists, when I do.

If, on the other hand, the reason for the attempt at conservation is "it pleases me/us to have them around, I'd miss them if they were gone", then that, I can understand entirely.

But conservation for its own sake? Conservation because of some vague yet perceived moral obligation? Nah.

I have read some excellent studies on the biological origins of human homosexuality and the benefits it confers (very little in nature occurs that doesn't provide some sort of competative evolutionary advantage in the proper environment.) The genetics root is mostly bunk.

Male homosexuality in mammals finds its root in the first 2 trimesters of pregnancy. A pregnant mother subjected to certain stresses, lack of food, sleep, security, will generate excesses of androsterone rather than testosterone, the hormones tied to male sexual development. Androsterone binds competatively with testosterone in the same receptor sites and results in a homosexually oriented male baby. Now there can be other causes of the hormonal imbalance in the pregnant mother besides stress, for example genetic glandular deficencies (which is the origins of the false start for a genetic tag.) This has been tested in the lab and is reproducible since as early as 1972, but human studies require invasive procedures in early pregnancy and are seldom conducted.

This actually confers an indirect evolutionary benefit. A pregnant mother under primitive circumstances (think 60,000+ years ago) would be subjected to stress when there was a lack of food, or high danger. Having a homosexual baby would still provide for the sustenance of the tribe, but would not increase the population pressures to compete for future resources. All done with one little chemical switch, and observable in all mammalian species, and most social avians.

However, we have far less information on femal mamalian homosexuality. There have been studies citing smoking and apnea in the pregnant mother as dramatically increasing female homosexuality occurances, so it is believed to be connected to O2 content - but it is harder to study than a quantifiable hormone level and socially recieves less attention and funding.

Sorry if I bore...

Problem is this hypothesis is that it doesn't account for both male and female variations in sexuality. Remember that not all homosexual behavior is linked to exclusive homosexuality. Even in humans quite a large percenteage around fall between exclusive heterosexuality and homosexuality. The minority are 100% straight or gay. (see A. Kinsey's studies on the subject, you probably already are familiar with them)

This also does not account for the fact that homosexuality among animals is observed in times of plenty as well as scarcity. Of course, a genetic component is present. In your hypothesis, the hormonal switch is only possible if the mother has the genetic capability to make the switch.

The fact is that we don't really know the cause of sexualities. We only know that it occurs. We are still learning.

Certainly in the nature v nurture argument, nurture cannot be ignored. I was addressing only the nature side of the issue. We are social creatures and behaviors are widely learned, including expressions of sexuality. The fact that cultural encouragement of female lesbian experimentation and a stigmata to male expressions of it have resulted in a circumstance where a straight woman can comfortably make out with another straight woman irrespective of her actual internal drives simply because it is not only accepted, it is encouraged. Furthermore, Kinsey's study was of humans and, while excellent work, is limited by the subjects personal views. The studies I cite to were animal studies and controlled strictly for the non-learned behaviors of natural orientation and drives (as opposed to nurtured / learned behaviors.)

I don't think personally that it can really be explained much better than our present understanding for humans. The topic and our own physical morphology don't allow for it. For some people, other traits are more important to determine attraction than such basic physical ones as even gender, and that will always bar tracing it to a root origin.

Oh, one other thing about the homosexuality in animals in times of plenty and genetics, I think I mentioned (I'd have to go back and look, but I think I did) that the genetics of the mother could have a bearing, but not in the fetus, if it were a genetic root to some glandular cause for the over-abundance of androsterone or shortage of testosterone. Even in times of plenty, an animal can starve.

The important part in my opinion is that ultimately, we shouldn't really care. Gay, straight, bi, whatever. I don't want to be told whom I can and cannot feel for, just simple quid pro quo. It is ignorant to say it is a conscious choice for homosexuals when it wasn't one for heterosexuals, it is ignorant to say it is unnatural when we have natural causes and see it in nature all over, it is ignorant to treat it inequitably when there really isn't a justification to. That's all, just too much ignorance.