Bird Yaoi Which Is For Birds (And Bird Yuri Which Is Also For Birds)

Same-sex behavior in birds: what it looks like, why it happens, and how it might be better for the species than you think.

 

Same-sex behavior has been observed in a large number of bird species- something like 130- and probably goes undetected even more frequently considering the fact that a large proportion of birds are not sexually dimorphic (and so it often takes a DNA test to realize that Mr. and Mrs. are actually Mr. and Mr.).

I should clarify that I am talking about same-sex behavior and not necessarily same-sex sex, because for about 93% of bird species, sex consists of two birds touching cloacas with a squirt of sperm passed between them. Not a whole lot of room for experimentation. And more often than not, because of the positioning of said cloacas, same sex pairs can’t even touch them together. Though some will try their darndest.

However, birds tend to be all about PRESENTATION. And many species tend to have vastly more elaborate rituals for getting a mate than the actual 5-second act of sex.

Lots of people are reading this right now and preparing mental arguments that say “well if there’s no actual SEX it can’t be homosexual!!! only sex makes gay things gay!! NO GAY WITHOUT PENIS IN BUTT!!!”

…to which I say first of all calm down a little, it’s all right. Second of all of course in the end our observations are all based on our own human constructs of what counts as sexual and what doesn’t.

However, if you look at a male and female swan necking with each other and say “aww, they love each other and they’re gonna have babies!” and then look at a pair of male swans doing the same thing and say “THEY’RE JUST BROS. BROS RAISING CHICKS TOGETHER. ONE HAD SEX WITH A GIRL ONCE SO IT’S NOT GAY,” I say… that’s a pretty unbalanced definition.

(In other words, nature doesn’t queerbait.)

Anyhow, when I talk about homosexual behavior here, I include behavior that’s used to attract a mate and/or maintain a pair bond as well as directly sexual behaviors like mounting.

It’s important to note the distinction between gay behaviors and gay individuals, as well. I can’t ask a bird what her sexual orientation is, right? All I can do is observe her behavior and say “those particular behaviors are pretty gay, Meredith.” To which Meredith responds, “Yes, Koryos, you sly little hoopoe, but remember that we can’t apply the human definition of orientation to an animal and vice versa.”

Probably the biggest collection of gay bird research was put together by Bruce Bagemihl, famed author of Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. It is a pretty good book and it has more gay animal sex than you can shake a stick at. However, as much as I like Bagemihl, he does have a slight tendency to exaggerate some of the findings- not to mention he’s grossly over-cited in every thing on gay animals ever- so I’m going to try not to use him as a source in this post. Sorry Bruce. I still dig your work man, rock on.

So anyway, gay birds. There have actually been a few famous ones- none more so than two male chinstrap penguins named Roy and Silo who appeared frequently in the news when they ‘came out.’

People got all excited, the penguins got to raise an egg, the female chick (Tango) that hatched from egg went on to pair bond with another female, yada yada, cute children’s book came out, etc.

Some people like to point out the fact that Roy and Silo later broke up, and Silo became pair-bonded with a female penguin, as if incidences of opposite-sex behavior automatically negate all previous same-sex engagements. Which is quite silly. And anyway, remember that we’re only talking about same-sex behaviors, not orientation. While there are some avian individuals that exclusively mack on the same sex, species-wide patterns suggest that having both hetero- and homosexual behavior is what provides the direct reproductive benefit.

Wait, what? Reproductive benefit? From THE GAY?

I’ll talk about that more in a minute, so hold on to your primaries. Right now let’s peek back at Roy and Silo. The only reason we really know that Roy and Silo are in fact the deep gay is because they were in captivity, chinstrap penguins being the unisex suit-wearing type. And captivity does weird things to an animal’s mind, no doubt about it. Perhaps Roy and Silo just had an unusually liberal upbringing what with the hyenas in the exhibit next door. Who knows.

But hey, don’t lose heart, bird yaoi happens a lot in the wild too.

In fact, in 1911, a researcher/explorer named George Murray-Levick observed homosexual behavior among Adelie penguins (along with other taboo sexual acts such as necrophilia) and was so appalled that he actually recorded his findings in Greek so that no one could read them. I’m serious.

Later his notes were dug up from the archives and finally published to the community at large, and we all realized that he used the brilliant phrase “hooligan cocks” several times in the paper.

Certainly different from some of today’s scientists who would record such acts with some, dare I say it, glee. I think we’ve all heard about mallard ducks and their issues (it is the norm for males force sex on females and they tend to have no qualms about the sex or life status of their partners). This is made easier by the fact that ducks are among the few species of birds that DO have phalluses- in the duck’s case, terrifying hell corkscrew phalluses. (Be careful clicking that video in public.)

A fellow named David Ainley did a few further experiments on the sexual habits of Adelie penguins, following up Levick’s work, and found that the male penguins would indeed mount and attempt to mate with a dead penguin if it was in a female-ready-for-sex position. They would also do the same with a fake penguin, and a rock with a penguin head attached to it with a piece of wire. They were- er- not so picky.

The thing is that the shape of a female penguin ready to receive the goods was what’s called a “sign stimulus” for the fixed action pattern male Adelie penguins have for mounting. Essentially, if they see anything that resembles a horny lady, they instinctually mount it, be it female, male, dead, or rock.

So, is that what homosexual behavior in birds is all about: accidentally having sex with rocks?

Well, no, sometimes it’s logs. Just kidding, we’ll get to the logs later. No, gay behavior isn’t just a case of mistaken identity when it occurs in birds, even if they do look dang similar at times. Because not all birds are monomorphic. Examine the male Guianan cock-of-the-rock (no, I didn’t make that name up, it is a happy coincidence).

Female cock-of-the-rocks are much more modestly dressed, because it’s the males that have got to woo them with their looks. Cock-of-the-rocks are lek breeders, meaning the males get together in groups and try to out-sexy everyone else while the females watch. Then the females pick the the sexiest man in the group and mate with him whilst the rest look on with bitter tears in their eyes.

It’s no surprise that the males then sometimes go on to court/mount one another for better luck. Like 40% of the time. Really, the best explanation that there is for this is that these birds are just horny.

Frustrated male trysts, ok. That makes sense, and there’s no real drawback to a little man-on-man bum slappage on the side, especially if you have a horrible statistical chance of ever getting to do the do with a lady in the first place. Dangit, lekking!

So we’ve got peguins having sex with dudes and rocks due to instinct and cock-of-the-rocks going orange and orange because fuck it. But yo, our famous examples Roy and Silo weren’t just cocking their rocks together. They were like, romantic. And they raised a baby. What’s going on with them? Is it that captivity thing?

You know the answer is no already. Actually, here’s where that direct reproductive fitness benefit I mentioned earlier comes into play: sometimes behaving as gay as possible allows more of your offspring to survive to adulthood.

How, you say? You need a mommy and a daddy to have kids! Well, generally yeah (there are some cases when you don’t, but that’s a whole other post) but even if the mommy and daddy touch cloacas once after a night on the town, it doesn’t mean that mommy doesn’t then go home to lady and daddy doesn’t then go home to mister.

Was that confusing? Ok, I’ll explain. Many species of birds have a hard freaking time raising their stupid useless giant-mouth offspring by themselves. This is where monogamous behavior- the pair bond- comes in: with two individuals feeding and guarding the babies, a lot more are likely to survive. And in general, it makes sense for these individuals to be male and female, because they are the ones who can combine their genes. You don’t want to be stuck raising someone else’s genes, evolutionarily speaking.

And if that were all there was to it, we’d be peachy keen with the far right. But nature doesn’t really work in straight lines and right angles. First of all, there is a hell of a lot of cheating going on in supposedly “monogamous” birds. A ridiculous amount- like, it is absolutely the norm to cheat on your partner in bird world. Second of all, sex ratios aren’t always even. There are always going to end up being more males or more females because some die off or there’s weird water or something.

So what do you get when you add cheating to excess members of the same sex? Lesbian* terns!

*Ok not technically lesbians because that’s a human term but you know what.

Basically, there were more females than males in a population of roseate terns, and scientists realized that there were female-female pairs raising their clutches together, in what is correctly termed a ‘lesbian superclutch.’

Mind you, this was not a perfect solution to the problem. While the female-female couples were more successful at raising their offspring than solitary couples due to teamwork, they still had a harder time of it than heterosexual couples. Why? Because- there being two females- they were raising twice as many eggs together.

But again, it was still a better strategy than say, not lesbians**.

**Not lesbians is actually the WORST strategy.

Male-male pair bonds occur too, as in Roy and Silo. What occasionally happens is that each member of the pair mates with the same female, then promptly kicks her out of the nest. As with the female-female pairs, they do have a slightly lower success rate raising offspring compared to heterosexual pairs, but still a higher one compared to single parents.

Greylag geese and black swans take this behavior even farther sometimes and form male-male-female trios. The advantage to the trio is obvious: more individuals raising the offspring- particularly the presence of two males obtaining more territory. The drawback is also obvious: it’s harder for the males to be sure that they are raising their own offspring.

Incidentally, there is usually a primary pair within these trios, with the third member being a kind of late-to-the-party hanger on. The main pair can be either male-male or male-female.

(Observe actual female-female roseate tern pairs here and greylag goose trios here in one of my favorite documentaries.)

Greylag geese are among the birds that do vigorously attempt gay sex, though this can cause problems, because each male is equally determined to mount the other. This can devolve into squabbling, and sometimes actual sex (it is noted that one male isn’t more likely to be on top than the other in most pairs) and sometimes it can actually turn into sex with a third party or log. (The log thing is real.) However, the postcopulatory display (a kind of triumphant ‘we did the sex!’ posture) is not directed towards the substitute, but to the pair-bonded partner. Aww (kind of).

It’s important to note that unlike the penguin-and-rock scenario, these males are definitely not mistaking their partner for females, given that their partner is trying to vigorously mount them at the same time. The same goes for female-female couples; one does not behave more masculine than the other.

(Female-female couples do sometimes mount one another, but this isn’t necessarily ‘masculine’ behavior because in many species the females in heterosexual pairs will occasionally mount the males. You go, progressive bird couples.)

While both male and female same-sex mating behavior can be found in many bird species regardless of mating system, there is a slight trend for both of the sexes: male-male behavior is more likely to be found in polygamous systems like the cock-of-the-rock’s, while female-female behavior is much more likely to be found in monogamous systems like the roseate tern’s. Female-female behavior is observed much less frequently in polygamous systems than male-male behavior is observed in monogamous systems.

Interestingly, a different trend follows when you look at the degree to which offspring are precocial or altricial. (Precocial means your baby is able to walk around and feed itself pretty much right after hatching, a la a baby chicken, while altricial chicks are useless giant mouths like baby robins.)

Female-female behaviors are more frequently observed in species with semi-precocial or precocial offspring than altricial offspring. Which is peculiar, given that most monogamous species also have altricial young.

What does this mean? Well, it makes sense if you think about it a little. I already described how some female-female pairs happen because there are no extra males to pair with. In monogamous species with precocial young, female-female pairs that have twice the number of chicks to raise together (as both are laying eggs) are likely more successful than raising young in monogamous species with more difficult altricial young. And females in polygynous precocial species don’t need the extra help at all.

The distinction is likely less sharp for males because more wings around the nest is always good in species with altricial young that are hard to raise (hence triads!)- however, males in polygynous species, particularly species where males tend to form same-sex groups, show a higher incidence of same-sex behavior. In the single polyandrous species- i.e. females that mate with multiple males, sort of a reverse harem type deal- that was examined in the study, female-female behavior occurred in more frequency than male-male behavior.

To sum it all up: a lot of homosexual behavior in birds occurs because it actually helps out, and more babies get raised because of it. And some of it occurs because oops.

But that doesn’t explain all of it by a long shot. Think of the cock-of-the-rocks! A lot of gay bird behavior doesn’t really seem to occur for any other discernible reason than “we’re here, we’re queer, put your giant yaoi wings on my face.”

Thanks, bird yaoi for birds, for both helping further bird species and also for sometimes making bird species so gay they could go extinct.

References/Further Reading

Bagemihl, B. (1999). Biological exuberance: Animal homosexuality and natural diversity. Macmillan.

Huber, R., & Martys, M. (1993). Male-male pairs in greylag geese (Anser anser). Journal für Ornithologie, 134(2), 155-164.

The hypothesis that the male-male pairbond is facilitated by pseudo-female behavior of one of the partners, was not supported. Both ganders of a homosexual pair were similar in behavior and no similarities to the behavior typical of females was detected…

All sexual acts of gander pairs, particularly attempted and successful copulations, began with precopulatory displays of both ganders such as “head-dipping” and “Kog- genhaltung”, followed by attempts to mount. In pairs where the size discrepancy is large, the smaller gander was frequently forced into the female position and mounted. In pairs of similar size attempts may (1) continue for some time until one animal succeeds in mounting of its partner (reversals of the male position on consecutive days were observed in several such pairs); (2) increase in intensity and culminate in a fierce fight; or (3) one gander may mount inanimate objects, such as logs, or a bystanding female or male goose which had joined in with the precopulatory display. In either case, the post- copulatory display is always directed towards the true partner, and not towards the animal or object it copulated with.

Hunt Jr, G. L., Newman, A. L., Warner, M. H., Wingfield, J. C., & Kaiwi, J. (1984). Comparative behavior of male-female and female-female pairs among western gulls prior to egg-laying. Condor, 157-162.

The behavior of male-female(M-F) and female-female(F-F) paired Western Gulls (Lam occidentalis) before egg laying was examined on Santa Barbara Island, California to test the hypothesis that one female in a F-F pair may assume a male role. In M-F pairs, no behaviors were performed exclusively by either sex, although males Mounted more often, females Head-tossed more often and males acted more aggressively toward intruders. Within F-F pairs, neither partner consistently showed masculine behavior. In a comparison of behavior toward intruders, both members of F-F pairs resembled the female in M-F pairs, and were generally significantly different from males. We therefore reject the hypothesis that female-female pairing is the result of either the adoption of a “male” behavioral role by one or both partners, or an extreme “female” role by one member.

Kotrschal, K. U. R. T., Hemetsberger, J. O. S. E. F., & Weiß, B. M. (2006).Making the best of a bad situation: homosociality in male greylag geese.Homosexual behaviour in animals. An evolutionary perspective. Cambridge University Press, New York, 45-76.

MacFarlane, G. R., Blomberg, S. P., Kaplan, G., & Rogers, L. J. (2007). Same-sex sexual behavior in birds: expression is related to social mating system and state of development at hatching. Behavioral Ecology, 18(1), 21-33.

The frequency of MM sexual behavior increased with degree of polygamy, although occurred across all mating systems. FF sexual behavior occurred predominantly in socially monogamous species. FF sexual behavior was also more likely to occur in species in which monogamy occurs together with the production of precocial offspring; that is, in monogamous species that are exceptions to the more common altricial mode of development. The social context conferred by a particular mating system and mode of development are likely contributing factors to the expression and frequency of same-sex sexual behavior. In some cases, same-sex sexual behavior may serve social and/or sexual functions not necessarily related to reproduction, confer indirect fitness benefits, and/or be adaptively neutral, co-occurring within the context of reproductive opportunity.

Attempting to ascribe adaptive function and fitness benefits to all sexual interactions may be misdirected. Many individuals who engage in same-sex sexual interactions also participate in heterosexual interactions (Bagemihl 1999). Equally, many populations include nonbreeding individuals; a proportion of which may engage in heterosexual courtship and copulation yet never reproduce during their life history (Collias and Jahn 1959; Mills 1991). Our findings highlight a need to re-examine both same-sex and opposite-sex sexual behavior in a context broader than currently provided by traditional selection theory, which interprets the “function” of sexual behavior predominantly in terms of direct reproductive fitness.

Moeliker, C. W. (2001). The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae). Deinsea, 8, 243-247.

Russell, D. G., Sladen, W. J., & Ainley, D. G. (2012). Dr. George Murray Levick (1876–1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin. Polar Record, 48(04), 387-393.

After witnessing similar behaviour to that noted by Levick, Ainley devised a manipulative experiment to record the behaviour of lone males when a dead penguin, frozen into the position assumed by females during copulation, was placed in a nest. The releasing display on the part of a female who is receptive to copulation is to lie in the nest in a submissive posture (feathers sleeked, eyes not widely opened)… older males at this point in the breeding season appear to find any bird in such a position, be it a chick, injured, of the same sex or, as in this case, dead, irresistible… it was found that just the frozen head of the penguin, with self-adhesive white ‘O’s’ for eye rings, propped upright on wire with a large rock for a body, was sufficient stimulus for males to copulate and deposit sperm on the rock.

Sauer, E. F. (1972). Aberrant sexual behavior in the South African ostrich. The Auk, 717-737.

Trail, P. W., & Koutnik, D. L. (1986). Courtship Disruption at the Lek in the Guianan Cock‐of‐the‐Rock. Ethology, 73(3), 197-218.

 

About Koryos

Writer, ethology enthusiast, axolotl herder. Might possibly just be a Lasiurus cinereus that types with its thumbs.
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