Researchers Discover Gay Penguins in Japanese Aquarium

I don't know what all the fuss is about. I assumed they were all gay.

A little too dapper, you know? A little fussy.

Look at them. Everyone of them has the same thought: "I am just dying for an Appletini."

At any rate, biologists have discovered a whole rave of these mincing little perverts:

Researchers have found a number of same-sex pairs of penguins at aquariums in Japan, with an imbalance between the numbers of male and female birds suspected to be the cause, a report said.

A research group led by Keisuke Ueda, professor of behavioral ecology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, found about 20 same-sex pairs at 16 major aquariums and zoos, Kyodo news agency said.

Penguins in captivity "may be more likely to form same-sex pairs" due to the difficulty of finding partners of the opposite sex because breeding facilities in Japan only have an average of 20 birds, the agency quoted Ueda as saying.

It is not known if the frequency of homosexuality is higher than in the wild, where telling the sexes apart is tough, he said.

Okay. Can I be serious for a second?

I may be a whacked out nutjob here, but I wonder if homosexuality is an evolutionary response to overpopulation.

Guys suddenly go gay in jail. Why? I've had years upon years of no action whatsoever and I never considered sex with a guy as fungible for sex with a girl.

What if homosexuality is both genetic and chemically determined? What if when there are too many male pheremones around-- signalling overpopulation, or, more commonly now, prison -- a homosexual attraction is engendered in some?

I don't know. Has anyone studied the incidences of homosexuality in cities -- or in big familes; lots of bodies in cramped spaces -- as opposed to the countryside or small families?

This may sound crazy, but I know there's some sort of fish that does something like this. If a male gets shut out of the breeding lottery, some sort of chemical change occurs and it turns female, either entirely female or at least largely female.

And no, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, or that it's a defect or anything. Maybe it's nature's way of saying "You guys are fucking wayyy too much." Or at least producing too many offspring.

Thanks to Robert McClelland, who I think posted this as some sort of baiting/trolling thing, but I think it's pretty interesting.

posted by Ace at 12:18 AM

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