Reproductive Strategies and Homosexuality

[leora]

A somewhat random chain of thought led me to the conclusion that homosexuality is actually rather symbolic of what makes humans so amazing. (Admittedly, I'm biased toward humans by being one

Comments

[elenbarathi]

Makes sense to me. Wolves are somewhat similar - in a wolf-pack, usually only the alpha pair has cubs; the rest of the pack helps with rearing them.

emergent

[leora]

Smaller litters and more attention is a very mammalian thing (birds too though to the best of my knowledge), so you'll see tons of examples. But it's certainly a spectrum. I don't know enough details about enough species to say much, but I'm fairly sure rabbits are more on the lots of young let many of them die end of the mammal spectrum and elephants are more on the serious amounts of care for their young over quite a fair bit of time end of things.

But it really is amazing how much care humans are willing to put into their young, and I do think it helps us to have accomplished as much as we have. I mean, we haven't bred all over the planet to the same extent as beetles have, but we've made and discovered some awesome stuff.

[lady_angelina]

This is a very fascinating take on this, and it makes sense, too.

Now if we can only convince the ultra-conservative anti-gay folks of this... this would really refute their ridiculous argument that "marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples because same-sex couples are incapable of sustaining viable families." =P

[leora]

Alas no, for a couple of reasons. First, many of them don't accept evolution. But also, when gay couples marry in the modern era, they are then more likely to have and raise children together, rather than helping out the children of their siblings. See, gay people often want pretty much the same thing straight people want, so nowadays, when they can have it through various means, they often just go and live their lives the way they want to.

So, it doesn't really work now. But we also have huge technological assistance in child-rearing that didn't used to exist. It's not like we need either parent fending off tigers. And people can use money as a unit of exchange to buy the service of another adult to help them care for their young, which is quite common as a way of gaining assistance in child care. There are lots of modern options that just weren't around in the past. I mean, we have grocery stores and refridgerators; it's pretty fantastic.

[alfvaen]

I remembering reading that mice (or was it rats?) have been shown to exhibit homosexual behaviour in overcrowded conditions. Perhaps humans have a similar trigger, making homosexuality more likely in urban environments. Or not, since we are a different species, after all.

[elenbarathi]

A larger population means more homosexual individuals even if the ratio of gay to straight in the population doesn't change - which is not something that can easily be measured when 'coming out' carries such risks. It's possible that the incidence of true homosexuality (sexual desire only for one's own sex) hasn't altered much, but that there are just more people in general now, better communication, and an international gay-rights community, so it seems like there's more gay people around

[leora]

I didn't read the comment you replied to as linking to human stats at all, just wondering if humans would work the same way as rats and saying it wasn't easy to know

[fitfool]

Neat way to look at it. I've heard similar arguments for how polygamous family structures benefit kids since there are more adults invested in taking care of the kids.