Sexual Segregation and Homosexuality in Animal Species

Ecologists have been studying certain male and female animals that use different habitats depending on their sex. Due to their choice of territory, conservation plans do not usually take into account this preference and, thus, may result in losing many males or females, thereby threatening their populations.

Albatross males prefer Antarctic and subantarctic regions to swoop down and catch fish or baited longline hooks. Meanwhile, females tend to forage in warmer, subtropical areas. Albatrosses often get snagged and drown when they try to swoop and seize hooked bait or collide with trawl fishing cables. An estimated 100,000 of these birds die this way annually.

Ecologists have been warning for years that groups responsible for drawing up conservation plans have to treat and consider this sexual segregation of animals. Albatross birds are only one of the many animals that do sexual segregation. Sexual segregation is the phenomenon where different sexes of the same species use different spaces for habitat and forage during non-mating seasons.

Kathreen Ruckstuhl, an ecologist from the University of Calgary specializing in sexual segregation of species, said that this phenomenon is ignored or not considered. Terry Bower, an emeritus professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that agencies that deal with management and conservation of species do not take into account sexes separately.

Sexual segregation may frequently be overlooked, thus threatening populations of animals. Also, conservationists experience certain limitations such as difficulty in tracking one of the sexes, therefore thwarting efforts of determining particular areas to be considered protected areas.

On a similar note, this sexual segregation of habitats and forages may lead to individuals' exposure to same-sex sexual partners. According to the book by Aldo Poiani entitled Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective, a chapter on the effects of sexual segregation describes that one of the three choices in terms of sexual behavior in birds and mammals is to engage in homosexual behavior and interaction.

Homosexual behavior is present in sexually segregated animals or when there is a surplus of females in a population such as the Laysan albatross in Hawaii, where females are lifelong partners in raising a chick. Although it is well known that homosexuality is common in humans, so much that June is Pride month, in some populations, this behavior is quite normal within the animal kingdom.

Female Japanese macaques are known for engaging in homosexual behavior, and for decades, many other animals have also been documented to participate in same-sex mating. In some species, homosexual behavior happens in isolated or rare occasions. However, there are also some animals where homosexual behavior is not just an outlying thing but also a regular event.

Paul Vasey, a professor at the University of Lethbridge, has been studying the macaques for more than two decades. He believes that this typical homosexual behavior is not merely evolutionary irrelevant. However, his findings show that these sexual activities for the sexual pleasure of macaques apply to both homosexual and heterosexual contexts.

Other animals such as male fruit flies, male flour beetles, Laysan albatross, bonobos, bottlenose dolphins, and domestic male sheep engage in homosexual behavior for evolutionary reasons. Some of these motives include a trial-and-error approach in search of a mate, the transfer of sperms to females without courtship, survival of species by finding a mate to rear a young with, and forging social bonds to climb up the social ladder, as well as increased fertility in females.