Aug-99
"JERUSALEM -- The London newspaper The Independent reports that a pair of gay vultures at
the Jersualem Zoo have shown the world just how talented and caring gay adoptive parents can be."
..
"As an experiment, Israeli zoologist Shmuel Yidov took a day-old vulture chick that had been hatched in an incubator, inserted it carefully inside a swan's egg and slipped it into the nest. Fooled, the pair took turns to sit on it and warm it until it hatched again."
"Dashik and Yehuda then reared their baby. 'They did a great job,' said a spokeswoman for the zoo,,Sigalit Dvir. 'They shaded him on hot days, they brought him water from a pond, they fed him, they stopped him falling from the nest.'"
There's more, but you'll have to go to the web site to read it.
:)
http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/datalounge/news/record?record=3778
Another one is chimpanzees. Bisexuality is the norm among male chimps (check out Jane Goodall's books). Effectively a male chimp forms a long-term partnership with another male (which includes sex at times). WHen the higher-ranking of the pair challenges for leadership of the troupe, the backing of sidekick is essential. If successful, they then become nos 1 and 2 respectively in the pecking order of the troupe for access to the females, as well as food etc. But their closest relationship is with each other.
This *may be one reason why many male humans have gay or bisexual tendencies - inherited over 5 million years ?
National Geographic special, "The New Chimpanzees" which aired September 6, 1995 - "Diverse and frequent hetero- and homosexual contact occurs among the animals. . . . Not only does homosexual behavior exist in nearly every species of every order of animal known to science (a fact demonstrated repeatedly by uncounted studies beginning with Konrad Lorenz, the father of modern zoology) but as one ascends the evolutionary ladder from less sophisticated creatures to hominids, homosexual activity increases in frequency."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 1995) - Drs. Shang-Ding Zhang and Ward Odenwald of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, observed that "Reduced levels of the chemical [serotonin] in laboratory animals, such as rats, rabbits, and cats, have been linked to homosexual behaviour." [For your information, serotonin is an important protein found in virtually all higher species and its production is genetically controlled.]
Proceedings of the Society of Neuroscience (November 1994) - J.K. Graham, G.J. Bloch and Richard Mills of Brigham Young University found in studies involving rats, that sexual orientation can be determined biologically, and may even be influenced by behavior of pregnant rats. [For your information, Brigham Young University is not exactly a bastion of gay rights.]
On a less scientific basis, he tour guides at the San Francisco zoo will show you geese, sea gulls, penguins, lions and some hoofed animals in homosexual relationships. The zoo has a pair of female geese that have been happily married for years. [Now you will probably argue that there must be something in the air in San Francisco.]
Perhaps we have more to learn from the "animal kingdom." After all, almost all of what human beings do is "unnatural," which does not automatically equal "immoral." No other creature drinks milk after weaning, drives cars, wears clothes, invokes a God, or writes letters to CompuServe.
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Copyright August 1999, by mggm. All rights reserved, except that free distribution via any medium is permitted as long as author's credit is given and no profit is involved.
