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Originally Posted by timalkin
I'm not really sure what is gained by revealing this type of information. A biological basis for homosexuality simply means that homosexuality is some sort of genetic mutation that is undesirable in the grand scheme of life. Since homosexuals don't bear offspring, they don't pass their genetic material to another generation.
It's not such a big deal in the human world where we set goals other than having children and raising them, but a homosexual animal is very undesirable in nature. An animal's most important goal in life is to produce offspring. It's safe to say that any homosexual animal species died out long ago.
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as squisher pointed out, knowledge of this information is more important for assuring the gayzilla fearing residents of the country that it's natural, and that (by their very existence) they aren't trying to convert the good god fearing folk.
anyways... when we look at the whole thing about trying to 'pass their genetic material to another generation' we generally think in terms of the individual, which i think shows a bias in the way 'our' society thinks. but what really matters in nature is survival of the species as a whole, not the individual. one possibility (i think i may have heard about it in another thread about this topic, can't remember where though) is the homosexual members of an animal community actually play a beneficial role in that they help care for and raise/protect the pack/gaggle/troop/insert other name for an animal group, leading to an increased chance of the groups young serviving until maturity so they can reproduce. i think this study was actually based on one type of animal in the wild and the role that homosexuals played in certain native american cultures.
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Originally Posted by Squishor
As for what you said, I know I can't be the first one to think of this, but I've wondered whether homosexuality might not be nature's way of dealing with overcrowding in populations? It strikes me that although we have the well-documented cases of "gay" penguins in zoos, for example, I don't know whether this behavior is observed in the wild. Does anyone know if there have been any studies correlating population density with homosexuality?
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doesn't that seem like a lot of work on natures part when it could easily just not let there be enough resources/increase in natural preditors of a population to thin the herd?