Speaker 1: Everybody. We're in line for Beyonce tickets. So if y'all
Speaker 1: could just wait until we've got them, that would be great,
Speaker 1: much appreciated. I don't have high hopes. Hey, Now, with
Speaker 1: that attitude, what would Beyonce say if she were in
Speaker 1: our situation. I mean, she'd say, release your job, release
Speaker 1: your hope for tickets to my shop? All right, fair,
Speaker 1: But she'll know she'd say, Ticketmaster won't break your soul.
Speaker 1: There you go. I'll be like, you're right, girl, they're
Speaker 1: going to try. Yeah, you know right. I looked up
Speaker 1: it's like how much are Beyonce tickets going to be
Speaker 1: when they do go on sale? And I saw they
Speaker 1: were like, well, you know, probably a hundred and ten
Speaker 1: dollars or the cheapest seat will be somewhere in that
Speaker 1: range big range, big range, one of those numbers. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, we can make that work. And in one
Speaker 1: of those numbers, I'm like that I would never pay
Speaker 1: that for anything. I can't do that, I cannot go.
Speaker 1: I mean, to be honest with you, I might pay
Speaker 1: for that much. We'll talk. I might just because I
Speaker 1: love Renaissance, sure, and I would like to see Beyonce
Speaker 1: live one time, and well, that's where I'm at because
Speaker 1: like I don't, I couldn't. I'm still on scrubs, you know,
Speaker 1: Like that's where I'm at with Beyonce. Grubs is TLC. Damn,
Speaker 1: I'm still on bills, bills, bills. I haven't kept up,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. But that show, I know from
Speaker 1: just a production standpoint, is going to be one of
Speaker 1: the most impressive shows ever made. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would go. That's what would right And I did see
Speaker 1: recently someone was like, just go to the concert, Like,
Speaker 1: just go because money it comes and it goes. But
Speaker 1: you have one life, yeah exactly, and who knows, you know,
Speaker 1: you might miss your chance to see Beyonce or you
Speaker 1: know whatever legends you want to go see seem as well,
Speaker 1: shell out and do it. You know, you like not
Speaker 1: likely to regret it. We have one to live, uh,
Speaker 1: and that time slips through the hourglass like the days
Speaker 1: of our lives, and you know, you might find yourself
Speaker 1: in a I don't know, a general hospital at some
Speaker 1: point and you're gonna be wondering, Uh, you know, what
Speaker 1: are all my children doing? So you're guiding light enjoy
Speaker 1: the Beyonce dynasty. Well, today we've got a really amazing story,
Speaker 1: another one that felt so simple when we decided to
Speaker 1: go into it and got so complicated in the best
Speaker 1: of ways. So I'm really excited to tell this story today. Y'all.
Speaker 1: They're here, they're queer, they're from the Southern Hemisphere. It's penguins. Now,
Speaker 1: there's been a bunch of gay penguin stories in the
Speaker 1: news in the last decade, and you would think that
Speaker 1: these are just mostly happy little puffin pieces in the news.
Speaker 1: But of course, for some people, these penguin stories just
Speaker 1: don't fly. But there's actually quite a long list of
Speaker 1: homosexual or bisexual behavior in the animal kingdom, and of
Speaker 1: course it turns out that it's a lot to get into.
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna talk about some famous penguin pairs
Speaker 1: and some other same sex animal partners, and then we'll
Speaker 1: hear about just how common this is in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: Finally we'll get into why biologists and LGBT activists alike
Speaker 1: don't really like to lean on the term gay for
Speaker 1: penguins and other animals. But then, while we're at it,
Speaker 1: just to top things off, there is another crazy fact
Speaker 1: that we'll get to about the only other animals besides
Speaker 1: humans to engage in prostitution. Well, let's make like a
Speaker 1: penguin and do it. Let's go, Hey, their French, come listen. Well,
Speaker 1: Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no
Speaker 1: match making, no romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships,
Speaker 1: a love it might be any type of person at all,
Speaker 1: and abstract cons that don't a conquer e ball. But
Speaker 1: if there's a story where the second glance ridiculous a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Okay, So, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's talk penguins, y'all. Penguins of course, flightless water birds.
Speaker 1: All but one species of penguin lives in the southern hemisphere. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's one species that lives like on the Galapagos Islands,
Speaker 1: just in the northern but most of them live in south,
Speaker 1: and the further south you get, the colder the environment is,
Speaker 1: the bigger they typically are. So you've got these little
Speaker 1: island penguins that are real tiny. And then of course
Speaker 1: like the Emperor penguins and the Antarctic are huge. Now, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell y'all this episode starts at a bit
Speaker 1: of a downer. We've all seen the meme floating around
Speaker 1: that says that the Chinese word for penguin is business goose,
Speaker 1: which is great because you can see a goose in
Speaker 1: a suit. You got yourself a penguin, right, beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, y'all, but that is another Internet lie. Not
Speaker 1: on the Internet. I know, I know, you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't always trust what you see time. Look, the truth
Speaker 1: is that it's kind of complicated because it goes into
Speaker 1: a lot of like Chinese characters and their literal and
Speaker 1: generic interpretations. It's complicated, but you can look up an
Speaker 1: article on Chinese boost dot com that will tell you
Speaker 1: that the Chinese characters for penguin actually means something closer
Speaker 1: to tiptoeing goose, which is just as cute. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: kind of love tiptoeing goose. Yeah, just like penguins. I mean,
Speaker 1: penguins are scientifically adorable. It's been proven again and again.
Speaker 1: I also want to throw out if I don't know
Speaker 1: if anyone's seen Happy Feet, but it is one of
Speaker 1: the greatest animated movies ever made. The Happy Feet directed
Speaker 1: by George Miller, the guy who makes the Mad Max movies,
Speaker 1: so it is intense. It is insane. Also, Babe to
Speaker 1: pig in the City. I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: a whole George Miller thing here, but his kids movies
Speaker 1: are great. I mean, no one doesn't like George. And
Speaker 1: one of the best penguin facts is that penguins have
Speaker 1: no particular fear of humans, and that's because they don't
Speaker 1: really have any land based predators of it um. They
Speaker 1: only have to worry about flying murder birds and swimming
Speaker 1: murder monsters. So when they see humans just like walking
Speaker 1: around boring style, they probably just think we're basically bigger,
Speaker 1: weirdly featherless ugly penguins with weird long legs. Love it.
Speaker 1: I love that a penguin would see me and be like, Yo,
Speaker 1: you and I were the same, you and I. You're
Speaker 1: not You're not some terror of the deep, and you're
Speaker 1: not some horrible, screeching hearty from the skies. You must
Speaker 1: be a penguin. God, I want to party with the penguins.
Speaker 1: I would also party with a penguin. So anyway, they'll
Speaker 1: usually walk up to people and get about like nine
Speaker 1: or ten feet away before they get nervous and keep
Speaker 1: their distance, which is also like people get about that close.
Speaker 1: I want to. I don't know about you. There are
Speaker 1: about seventeen different species of penguin, and they can be
Speaker 1: as small as about a foot tall, like the little
Speaker 1: blue penguin, up to the largest, which is the emperor penguin,
Speaker 1: and they get to be about three foot seven. But
Speaker 1: some prehistoric penguins could be as big and heavy as
Speaker 1: an adult human and I just want to give one
Speaker 1: a hug, me too. Write So for our non American
Speaker 1: listeners out there, an emperor penguin is a little over
Speaker 1: a meter tall, which I guess is easier than three
Speaker 1: ft seven. Whatever metric with it, I can appreciate the
Speaker 1: metric system. So when it comes to breeding, most penguins
Speaker 1: breed as a colony, and most of the pairings of
Speaker 1: penguins are monogamous, but not exclusively and not necessarily long term.
Speaker 1: According SeaWorld dot org, a Deli penguins, for example, repair
Speaker 1: with their previous year's mate sixty two of the time.
Speaker 1: A chin strap penguin is repaired at the time, and
Speaker 1: gentle penguins repaired with their previous partner each year of
Speaker 1: the time. That's incredible. That's way better stats than I
Speaker 1: think humans have. Honestly. Penguins usually share a mating ritual,
Speaker 1: and this involves a lot of lay heads swinging and trumpeting.
Speaker 1: They'll bow down, they'll look up, you know, a bird
Speaker 1: mating ritual basically. And then all penguins lay two eggs
Speaker 1: per nest, except for king and emperor penguins, who both
Speaker 1: lay one. And in all penguins, the two parents share
Speaker 1: incubation duties, or one sits on the egg while the
Speaker 1: other goes out fishing or whatever, except for emperor penguins,
Speaker 1: where exclusively the male does all of the incubating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: men pulling their weight, praising a child. You know, for penguins,
Speaker 1: we could learn a lot. I wonder if emperor penguin
Speaker 1: ladies are like, uh so you get to sit around
Speaker 1: all day? Oh my god, you really were really pulling
Speaker 1: your weight. A BBC article called if you think penguins
Speaker 1: are cute and cuddly, You're wrong says that if a
Speaker 1: female emperor penguin loses a chick, she might attempt to
Speaker 1: steal one from a nearby mother. That's crazy, straight up chicknapping.
Speaker 1: But then things get violent because if other nearby female
Speaker 1: penguins see it happening, they will gang up and fight her.
Speaker 1: What which, you know, that's community coming together kind of
Speaker 1: prevent child being. Some penguins have been seen stealing chicks
Speaker 1: from other birds. One emperor penguin kidnapped an egg from
Speaker 1: her own natural enemy, the scow up, which is a
Speaker 1: bird that eats penguins. So when the chicks actual parents
Speaker 1: showed up to try to you know, get their kid back,
Speaker 1: the penguins fought them off twice. Like I would like
Speaker 1: to keep this natural predator with me, please. This is
Speaker 1: like a Jerry Springer story or a Mori. Actually, that
Speaker 1: would be a pretty amazing episode of Jerry Springers and
Speaker 1: tried to penguins and they're just like now. BBC says
Speaker 1: that zoologists had to step in and return the chick
Speaker 1: to its real parents to basically save everyone involved. This
Speaker 1: was going to be a constant. Oh yeah. Plus when
Speaker 1: that school grows up full size. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it would think it was a penguin. Some some bird
Speaker 1: stories make me think it would. But maybe it's instinct
Speaker 1: would kick in and it would eat other baby penguins
Speaker 1: in the In the Mowgli situation, like the other penguins
Speaker 1: are like he's going to grow up and be a man.
Speaker 1: He's going to shoot us, and you know, the wolves
Speaker 1: were like, no, he's one of us, so he won't
Speaker 1: because he grew up with us. It's whole nature versus nurture. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: Brad Bird, I know you're listening. I want you to
Speaker 1: go call your friends at Pixar and we're gonna do this.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get this penguins school kidnapping story again. It's
Speaker 1: gonna beautiful. Yes, it's basically in the Jungle Book on ice,
Speaker 1: the Ice Blow Book. Yeah. Okay, So we're learning all
Speaker 1: this and what we're seeing is that penguins are devoted
Speaker 1: parents and they have pretty balanced gender roles. And that
Speaker 1: brings us to one of the first big sensationalized same
Speaker 1: sex penguin stories to hit the news. Roy and Silo.
Speaker 1: These are two male chinstrap penguins at the Central Park
Speaker 1: Zoo in Manhattan. They were seen performing mating rituals together.
Speaker 1: Every day. They would find each other and do those dances.
Speaker 1: They would entwine their necks and you know, and fling
Speaker 1: their heads back and let out these trumpets calls, and
Speaker 1: frequently they would, according to the reports, have sex. Now
Speaker 1: The Guardian, New York Times, BBC, and even National Geographic
Speaker 1: all declined to go into any detail on that. But
Speaker 1: also I kind of don't want to know, you know,
Speaker 1: but is their imagination worse is the real question. But anyway,
Speaker 1: apparently they had sex. When presented with female companionship, Roy
Speaker 1: and Silo both kind of just gave a big shrug
Speaker 1: and went back to each other. So they're actively choosing
Speaker 1: their partnership over the same sex pairing. And then their
Speaker 1: instinct started to take over, and Roy and Silo clearly
Speaker 1: wanted to raise a chick together, so much so that
Speaker 1: they found this like egg shaped rock and they took
Speaker 1: it back to their nest and tried to incubate and
Speaker 1: hatch it. Well, after that, there's book keeper Rob Graham's
Speaker 1: a decided it was time to see how they would
Speaker 1: do as parents, so he brought them a fertile egg
Speaker 1: from another nest. Hopefully there was he left one behind
Speaker 1: or something. Yes, this particular pairing was having trouble raising
Speaker 1: their egg together. I don't I don't know if that
Speaker 1: meant they were fighting or what the deal was, but okay,
Speaker 1: so it was like an adoptive parent, Yes, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a rescue, all right, so he brings them
Speaker 1: the sag. Sure enough, Roy and Silo were great dad's.
Speaker 1: They alternated sitting on the egg for the standard thirty
Speaker 1: four days until their chick, Tango, was born, and they
Speaker 1: raised Tango just like any other pair, keeping her warm,
Speaker 1: protecting her, feeding her from their beaks until she could
Speaker 1: eat on her own. In two thousand five, a children's
Speaker 1: book was written by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson called
Speaker 1: and Tango Makes Three, all about this happy penguin family,
Speaker 1: and it was widely seen as this very charming and
Speaker 1: delightful book all about the validity of same sex parenting.
Speaker 1: It won several awards, but according to the American Library Association,
Speaker 1: it was also the most challenged book in the country
Speaker 1: from two thousand six too, meaning that people wanted it
Speaker 1: banned and they didn't want their kids to read it
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and it remained in the top
Speaker 1: ten until nineteen. So people were really like feeling some
Speaker 1: type of way about these two penguins. One of the
Speaker 1: things that was funny is that funny and like the
Speaker 1: frustrating way is that people were using it and saying
Speaker 1: it was supporting gay marriage, and the authors and the
Speaker 1: publishers came out and they were like, actually, there's literally
Speaker 1: nothing in this book about gay marriage. It's specifically about
Speaker 1: same sex parenting and how it's totally fine, and you know,
Speaker 1: again it's just a metaphor. People were losing their minds
Speaker 1: about it. Still do, still do. I was amazed to
Speaker 1: see that it was still it was like number nine
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. Then it finally fell off the list
Speaker 1: because I guess people have just found enough other things
Speaker 1: to be angry about now. Unfortunately, in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: the same year that the book was published, Roy and
Speaker 1: Silo broke up. I know it's a tragedy. I got
Speaker 1: a speculation station. I just think that you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of fame can really affect a partnership. You know
Speaker 1: that they've got agents calling them all the time. You
Speaker 1: know what if Roy has offered a book deal and
Speaker 1: Silos nods, they're like paparazzi coming out, Barazzi all. There's
Speaker 1: no privacy. You know, there's no intimacy everybody. They don't
Speaker 1: spend enough time together. Next thing you know, they're clashing
Speaker 1: about panting styles. The fame goes to your head, you know,
Speaker 1: suddenly Silo is like, well, let's you know, let's keep
Speaker 1: our heads cool. We're still just each other, and Roy's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking rock star out groupies all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: according to queerty dot Com, Roy and Silo started having
Speaker 1: issues and drifting apart in two thousand four after a
Speaker 1: pair of aggressive penguins took over their nest, literally came
Speaker 1: and pushed him out. It's like, y'all made this nest
Speaker 1: real pretty, and now we're going to come in and
Speaker 1: take it over. A couple of years before they have
Speaker 1: these troubles, this female penguin named Scrappy had been transferred
Speaker 1: to the zoo from Sea World, and I guess in
Speaker 1: Sea World they must teach penguins to be home wreckers,
Speaker 1: because she swooped in on Silo, and Silo and Scrappy
Speaker 1: paired off together. New York Times reports that after that,
Speaker 1: Roy mostly stayed by himself and would often be seen
Speaker 1: quote alone in a corner, staring at the wall. Give
Speaker 1: him a stuffy or something that breaks my heart. It's
Speaker 1: not the same, he says. It will never be Silo. Now.
Speaker 1: On the plus side, for fans of same sex penguin stories,
Speaker 1: their daughter Tango did end up pairing off with another
Speaker 1: female named to Newsy. Yeah, well there you go. An
Speaker 1: article by Eric Caston's from Museum Studies at Tufts University
Speaker 1: called What's with all the Gay Penguins mentions another penguin couple,
Speaker 1: Harry and Pepper, who had a similar story. They had
Speaker 1: been together for about five years when Harry cheated on
Speaker 1: Pepper with a widow penguin named Linda end up probably
Speaker 1: killed her. Hug specs the black widow of penguins. What
Speaker 1: Linda was described by her own caretaker as quote conniving,
Speaker 1: according to an article in Time, and I love the
Speaker 1: caretakers being like that penguins manipulation. She's always plotting, and
Speaker 1: bloggers called her a home wrecker who quote lives for
Speaker 1: her own happiness no matter who gets hurt. M Linda
Speaker 1: has a real personality on fire. I need to see
Speaker 1: this this Bravo needs a show about Linda. Then in
Speaker 1: there were two female Gentoo penguins, Rocky and Marama, who
Speaker 1: hatched a chick together in London, and the London Aquarium
Speaker 1: ruffled a lot of feathers when they announced that they
Speaker 1: were not assigning a gender to this chick. Making it
Speaker 1: the first gender neutral animal in kept tip. This sounds
Speaker 1: kind of cooky, it might even sound trendy or click baby,
Speaker 1: but as the aquarium set in a statement quote, gender
Speaker 1: neutrality is a human construct, but it is completely normal
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom. They say that in the wild
Speaker 1: penguin males and females look and behave almost identically. Some
Speaker 1: studies have even questioned how much more prevalent same sex
Speaker 1: pairings and penguins might be because it's just so hard
Speaker 1: to determine males and females without active invasive testing. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of animals like that very true, they say.
Speaker 1: A lot of times biologists will study a pairing of
Speaker 1: animals and they will determine which one is the male
Speaker 1: and which one is the female by watching them have sex,
Speaker 1: and depending on which one behaves a certain way, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that must be the female. But they really don't know,
Speaker 1: and so they're like, this whole time, we might have
Speaker 1: been watching two males or two females and just didn't
Speaker 1: realize it. That happened in a penguin study in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's. Wow, I just remember having a bird
Speaker 1: that we thought was a girl. So we named your Grace,
Speaker 1: and then like years, a couple of years in found
Speaker 1: out it was a male bird, so we just called
Speaker 1: him Mr Grace. Very pretty lazy, but yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just one of those things where like I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: he was kind of guests or like the pet store guests.
Speaker 1: I don't really know who said that that was a
Speaker 1: female bird, right, but eventually it was like, it's not.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how we determined that either because
Speaker 1: I was too young. I just love being like, well,
Speaker 1: what are we going to call it now? Mr? Grace? Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean think about Jurassic Park. You know, how do
Speaker 1: you know the dinosaurs are female? Somebody go out and
Speaker 1: pull up their skirts? You know. Very true? Okay, But
Speaker 1: on the other hand of all that assigning gender identities
Speaker 1: and sexual orientations has been called anthropomorphizing, or assigning exclusively
Speaker 1: human characteristics to non human things. All of this is
Speaker 1: a lot, so I say, we just take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, We're going to look at sexuality
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different animals and see what the
Speaker 1: X what you're saying about all these bye birds and
Speaker 1: queer koalas and denisexual dolphins. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: that after this, Welcome back to the show, everybody. So
Speaker 1: can animals be gay? It's a big question, and it's
Speaker 1: also the title of a New York Times article from
Speaker 1: by John Muallem. And the answer is very clearly yes
Speaker 1: and no. Okay, so it's not very clear. It's actually
Speaker 1: super muddy and company, of course. So is there same
Speaker 1: sex sex in the animal kingdom? Now that's an easy yes,
Speaker 1: very much so. A Dazed Digital article says same sex
Speaker 1: behavior has been observed and up to a thousand species,
Speaker 1: from ducks to apes, to bats to beetles, pretty much
Speaker 1: any species, and all of them said, excuse me, can
Speaker 1: I get some privacy here? Is this really any of
Speaker 1: your um? But for a long time, biologists would not
Speaker 1: study this, or they would write it off. It's like
Speaker 1: some random, isolated event if they recorded it at all,
Speaker 1: picturing some like early twentieth century explorer seeing two male
Speaker 1: penguins and what what did I just? You know what
Speaker 1: I saw? Nothing? Clearly, just in preparatory school. Anything can
Speaker 1: happen at eton. No more. Recently, though, scientists are starting
Speaker 1: to actually pay attention and document when it's happening. But
Speaker 1: of course people are being you know real people about it,
Speaker 1: and they're putting a lot of extra weight on these studies.
Speaker 1: So when biologists Lindsay Young published a short paper about
Speaker 1: two female albatross pairings, she was quote pretty careful to
Speaker 1: plainly and simply report what we found, just you know,
Speaker 1: the objective factor. But by the end of the next day,
Speaker 1: the inner net was like flooded with people using it
Speaker 1: as propaganda. Either it was this big revelation about the
Speaker 1: human gay experience, or it was selective pseudo science meant
Speaker 1: to further some kind of gay agenda, the kay agenda,
Speaker 1: we're all better dressed with conditioned hair is the gay
Speaker 1: agenda in the room with us. Now. Now, on one hand,
Speaker 1: of course there's an obvious positive lesson here for homosexuality
Speaker 1: in humans. There's this constant disparagement that homosexuality is not natural,
Speaker 1: and that now gets thrown in the garbage because now
Speaker 1: we see that totally absent of any social structures or agenda's,
Speaker 1: same sex activity and partnerships both definitely exist in nature.
Speaker 1: And that is a really important finding and I think
Speaker 1: something people can take a lot of validation from. But
Speaker 1: now John Mualum points out that the central tenet of
Speaker 1: biology has always been like ever since Darwin that basically
Speaker 1: everything that happens, everything that non human animals do, goes
Speaker 1: back in some way to propagation of the species. So
Speaker 1: no matter what you see an animal doing, it's somehow
Speaker 1: related to producing offspring in the long run, right, the
Speaker 1: survival tactics, you know, what they eat, where they go,
Speaker 1: how they form as a community, and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's all about propagation. So why would an animal invest
Speaker 1: in sexual behavior that isn't reproductive? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: biologists like, well, this caused you know, this costs energy.
Speaker 1: This uh might leave you vulnerable, It takes time, Like
Speaker 1: what's the point? They call it an evolutionary paradox, and
Speaker 1: just the challenge of explaining it might be the main
Speaker 1: reason that biologists have kind of swept it under the
Speaker 1: rug for so long. It's not necessarily that biologists were
Speaker 1: always homophobic, although many of them have been and probably are,
Speaker 1: But this the sort of challenge of it h might
Speaker 1: be more of the reason that people would like, let's
Speaker 1: just not worry about it, right, But in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years or so, biologists are starting to theorize on
Speaker 1: ways that same sex activity is actually beneficial to the
Speaker 1: propagation of the species. For example, here's something you didn't
Speaker 1: want to know. Young male dolphins will sometimes stick their
Speaker 1: dicks in each other's blow ahead dolphins. They do funk
Speaker 1: around the dolphins, don't they They are crazy? Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that scientists did not look at much,
Speaker 1: like you know, they saw it and they'd be like,
Speaker 1: all right, no thanks, whatever y'all are doing, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna let that be over there and pretend that I
Speaker 1: was busy writing something else, dops. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that probably young male dolphins are being kind of like
Speaker 1: locker room buddies and they're bonding. It's like snapping a
Speaker 1: towel at each other or something. Because then those same
Speaker 1: groups of males work collectively to hook up with females later.
Speaker 1: So that explained why this behavior kind of stuck around
Speaker 1: in evolution. It was not bad for propagation. It was
Speaker 1: good for propagation. It helps them form a little gang
Speaker 1: because they've all they get a wingman, they've all they've
Speaker 1: all experienced each other's dick, so they're all closer. Now
Speaker 1: there you go, and they're like, now we can all
Speaker 1: go out and get girls together. Yeah, they get a
Speaker 1: thin man and the finn man's like, look, I've had
Speaker 1: his dick in my blowhole, and let me tell you something.
Speaker 1: You'd be lucky, isn't lucky. Primatologists Amy Parish and her
Speaker 1: team found female Japanese macoux quote engaged in intimate acts,
Speaker 1: which in humans would be in the X rated category.
Speaker 1: She says that might enhance their social position or a
Speaker 1: certain dominance in a way that helps them become more
Speaker 1: successful mates for male partners, which is very interesting that
Speaker 1: the females are like, maybe they're just teaching each other
Speaker 1: like this, this is how you satisfy a monkey. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yah, he got these Adie mccoq's all getting
Speaker 1: together and kind of like the dolphins. They're just like
Speaker 1: fooling around together. And that they said that either helps
Speaker 1: them create this sort of bond. So now they could
Speaker 1: be like, all right, girls night, let's go get some boys.
Speaker 1: Or one female is like I've mounted each and every
Speaker 1: one of y'all, so I get to choose first, you know.
Speaker 1: Either way, it's it is beneficial to their reproduction. Now.
Speaker 1: In bonobo apes, which are genetically very close to humans,
Speaker 1: nearly seventy of their sexual activity is nonreproductive. They're always
Speaker 1: you know, giving each other hand jobs and getting real
Speaker 1: freaky with each other. Come dry hunt my leg. Evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology professor Robin Dunbar said to National Geographic that males
Speaker 1: engage in same sex activity as a way to socially
Speaker 1: bond to Like the dolphins we talked about, he talks
Speaker 1: about Spartan soldiers having sex with each other, and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: they had the not unreasoned, noble belief that individuals would
Speaker 1: stick by and make all efforts to rescue others if
Speaker 1: they had a lover relationship. You know again, that's right,
Speaker 1: That's sort of like, well, if we're all doing it,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to be a lot more invested in
Speaker 1: this battle because this is someone who I've been really
Speaker 1: intimate with the most intimate level that I'm fighting next to.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a similar thing maybe for the bonobos.
Speaker 1: But he also says it could be more of a
Speaker 1: developmental phase, like kind of like when young animals wrestle
Speaker 1: with each other and they sort of play fight to
Speaker 1: build their strength. This might be young animals trying out
Speaker 1: these different parts of their bodies and minds by fooling
Speaker 1: around with their pals, and then some of them just
Speaker 1: end up sticking with it. I was gonna say that
Speaker 1: because I feel like kids do that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like not not even a sexual way, but
Speaker 1: like kids are just like, oh, look at my dick,
Speaker 1: or like, oh I'm growing kitties, look at them or
Speaker 1: care or something, you know what I mean. Like, you're
Speaker 1: just like you're were on the same level. So it's
Speaker 1: the same level of exciting and scary and weird and
Speaker 1: embarrassing and you know all those things. You can't really
Speaker 1: a younger kid or an older person, you can't really
Speaker 1: you wouldn't share. Does that make sense? And some snail species,
Speaker 1: all of them are born male. It's only after pairing
Speaker 1: up that one of the males will become female, which
Speaker 1: is a process that takes a few days, and then
Speaker 1: those females might go pair up with someone else. But
Speaker 1: some male snails consistently choose male partners, and then others
Speaker 1: always went for partners that had already become females. So
Speaker 1: these lab studies show that they have preferences. And more
Speaker 1: recent study from twenty nineteen said that same sex behavior
Speaker 1: goes way way back to early evolution, sexual behavior would
Speaker 1: have evolved before the kind of traits that differentiate the sexes,
Speaker 1: like size, odor, shape, color. Know, if we're just crawling
Speaker 1: out of the use, we haven't grown titties yet. We
Speaker 1: just trying to get rid of the tail. We started
Speaker 1: having sex before we started to look different. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all look the same. So individual animals would have
Speaker 1: just been having like indiscriminate sex with each other and
Speaker 1: like eventually reproduction would happen and be like, oh cool,
Speaker 1: that worked out. I have this rudimentary dick. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to keep sticking it into things until reproduction happens.
Speaker 1: Happens that way, we'll figure it out trial and error. Right. Basically,
Speaker 1: is that not evolution at work? Biologists Joan rough Garden
Speaker 1: told New York Times quote to think of all these
Speaker 1: animals as multitasking with their private part It kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like Telula Bankhead. She used to say she was
Speaker 1: not bisexual, she was ambisextrous. As those other traits evolved
Speaker 1: and animals became more distinct between male and female, they
Speaker 1: would be more likely to pair off in different sex pairings,
Speaker 1: but same sex behavior didn't really have a reason to
Speaker 1: go away. So it just kept happening. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: why you know, if if an animal has tendencies towards
Speaker 1: same sex behavior, it's not hurting their reproduction. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post article Queer Animals Are Everywhere, Elliott
Speaker 1: Shreyfer says the study shows from twenty nine that if
Speaker 1: animals are having same sex sex, or even bonding with
Speaker 1: the same sex partner, it does not necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: they're not also reproducing. Vincent Saviolinans calls it the bisexual
Speaker 1: advantage and that this fluid sexuality actually increases reproduction chances
Speaker 1: over the history of life, largely by simply increasing the
Speaker 1: amount of time that animals are having sex. Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, if you're just screwing everybody in your colony,
Speaker 1: you know somebody's going to get pregnant. But ultimately there
Speaker 1: might be no evolutionary advantage to same sex sex at
Speaker 1: all in animals, and that's something biologists might just have
Speaker 1: to get over. Deal with it. Biology. They talk about that,
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, Darwin's rule that kind of like
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Darwin's rule that everything must relate to procreation.
Speaker 1: Biologist think of it as they're like speed of light,
Speaker 1: Like that is the one rule that can't be broken,
Speaker 1: and they might have to break it. That might be
Speaker 1: too rigid. Isn't that interesting when you're doing science and
Speaker 1: you have to go, what am I assuming? You know?
Speaker 1: What is the foundational assumption? That might be the thing
Speaker 1: that's incorrect. Paul Vacy, who studied the Japanese macaques, said, quote,
Speaker 1: it isn't functional. The behavior has no discernible purpose adaptationally speaking.
Speaker 1: And that leads us to the reason that we've probably
Speaker 1: all been thinking that you've probably been screaming at us
Speaker 1: the whole time. And so why animals are having same sex? Sex?
Speaker 1: Sex is fun? Hey, In the last twenty years, studies
Speaker 1: have started to teach us that a lot of animal
Speaker 1: is really like having sex. Wow, what a surprise. So
Speaker 1: let's just take a quick break and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: how fun it is for everyone. Right after this welcome back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about why sex is fun. So
Speaker 1: Matthew Grober, who's a biology professor at Georgia State University,
Speaker 1: to old National Geographic quote, if sex wasn't fun, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any kids around. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: learned that at Georgia State University. Heyo, because I didn't
Speaker 1: learn it while I was there. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: sex in college. Just what I'm saying. So, he says
Speaker 1: that same sex behavior and animals might literally be just
Speaker 1: them enjoying themselves. I was wondering this the whole time,
Speaker 1: because it's like, if you're really thinking that all sex
Speaker 1: is about procreation, then why do we have oral sex?
Speaker 1: Why do we have fingering? You know, what's the point
Speaker 1: of it? And we're not gonna maybe I'll get to
Speaker 1: a point where I want to have your dickens. I mean,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of people do non penetrative stuff
Speaker 1: all the time. Uh, A lot of monkeys and big
Speaker 1: cats have a lot of oral sex apparently. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the biological explanation has always been, uh, it's because it
Speaker 1: prolongs their sexual activity and they have better chances of
Speaker 1: procreating and things like that. But that's kind of coming
Speaker 1: into question now too, and saying like that, I think
Speaker 1: they might just like it. Biologists are saying that the
Speaker 1: urge to have any sex at all might just be
Speaker 1: strong enough to overpower the instinct of reproduction, and so
Speaker 1: then the partnerships that animals form in those monogamous couples
Speaker 1: might just stem from that, And that brings us back
Speaker 1: to the original question, can animals be gay and why?
Speaker 1: The answer is kind of ambiguous and kind of no,
Speaker 1: and largely that's due to connotation. Like animals aren't straight either.
Speaker 1: These are very human terms with a very complex meaning
Speaker 1: that carry a lot of weight. Those snails that we
Speaker 1: talked about that are all born male before one becomes
Speaker 1: female after they pair up is not really a good
Speaker 1: parallel to the human transgender experience. Yeah, but it can
Speaker 1: help show that gender and sex are fluid in nature.
Speaker 1: So again, on one hand, same sex behavior in animals
Speaker 1: is validating, especially as a counterpoint to some anti lgbt
Speaker 1: Q rhetoric like, for example, Thomas Aquinas was a philosopher.
Speaker 1: He said in the thirteenth century that homosexual behavior and
Speaker 1: humans was wrong, specifically because it doesn't occur in nature.
Speaker 1: But now we know that science has proven that Thomas
Speaker 1: Aquinas can go eat his own butt. Thomas James Essex,
Speaker 1: the director of the LGBT Project at the a c
Speaker 1: l U, told New York Times that learning about same
Speaker 1: sex behavior in animals in college in the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties made a difference for him. He
Speaker 1: said he remember thinking, quote, oh, hey, this is quote
Speaker 1: unquote natural, this is normal, this is part of the
Speaker 1: normal spectrum of life. But he also said that it's
Speaker 1: totally beside the point and quote people should not be
Speaker 1: discriminated against regardless of what animals do. Yes, exactly right,
Speaker 1: which is like, duh, that does seem like a kind
Speaker 1: of an obvious thing, but it's very important to say that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sidney Woodruff, a non binary and queer PhD candidate at
Speaker 1: U C. Davis, told Washington Post that while they're studying
Speaker 1: western pond turtles, quote, I have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that if I'm researching sex and wildlife species, I'll want
Speaker 1: it to be a certain way because of my own
Speaker 1: gender and sexual identity. In our quest to find inaccuracies
Speaker 1: in previous research, we have to make sure we're being
Speaker 1: humble enough to know that we're not always going to
Speaker 1: get the answer that we want, which is very important. Again,
Speaker 1: It's like that thing where you're foundational assumption might be
Speaker 1: getting in the way of you learning. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And if you're basing you know, validating human behavior on
Speaker 1: what you learned from animals. You're going to find things
Speaker 1: that are like, oh, yes, this is great, and then
Speaker 1: you're going to find things that are like I'm going
Speaker 1: to pretend I didn't see that. You know that don't parallel.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just completely different scenarios. So there's there's
Speaker 1: value in it, but it's not, Uh, it's not really
Speaker 1: the most supportive argument, and it shouldn't need to be.
Speaker 1: We're we're really prone to seeing animals as reflections of ourselves,
Speaker 1: and we're constantly anthropomorphizing them, like to an unhealthy degree. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so picture a little kitty cat, right, adorable,
Speaker 1: precious cat. Can that cat solve a crime? Of course not.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't ask it to. Is just a cute little
Speaker 1: kitty cat. But now imagine that cat is wearing a
Speaker 1: little Sherlock Holmes cap and has a little pipe. And
Speaker 1: I would trust this cat to solve my own murder.
Speaker 1: I just would. I would. Everything is resting on this cat, now,
Speaker 1: great cat detective. Yes, you know, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where we put these images on animals that really
Speaker 1: just aren't there. I mean, we would love to see
Speaker 1: Roy and Silo get a little penguins sitter for tango
Speaker 1: and go out to Carly ray puffin concert and then
Speaker 1: come home and catch up on the latest episodes of
Speaker 1: Sealhousewives of Antarctica and Grace Krill and Grace Oh my God.
Speaker 1: Send us TV shows that you think gay penguin would watch, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll do it in our story on Instagram, and I
Speaker 1: want to hear them all. I would love it, So
Speaker 1: you know, anyway, we've got this image for what you know,
Speaker 1: to quote unquote gay penguins would be like. But that's
Speaker 1: that's not their life, right because more bluntly, animals do
Speaker 1: not have the human gay experience, right. They don't face
Speaker 1: discrimination in their homes and families. They don't have their
Speaker 1: own cultures centered around you know, safety and relatability and comfort.
Speaker 1: And animals that exhibit same sex behavior are not superior
Speaker 1: to different sex having animals when it comes to art, music, fashion, dancing,
Speaker 1: and hairstyles like they are in humans. Sorry gee, I
Speaker 1: mean they're just better. They're just better. Also, at the
Speaker 1: end of it all, nearly every animal observed having same
Speaker 1: sex sex was also seen having different sex sex too, so,
Speaker 1: as Daniel villa Real points out on queerty dot Com,
Speaker 1: most animals are probably bisexual if anything. Wow, So this
Speaker 1: might be the best lesson to take from it. In all,
Speaker 1: sex basically happens in this place where physical and emotional
Speaker 1: experiences kind of swished back and forth over each other.
Speaker 1: It's all a big, complicated amalgam. Sometimes it's all one
Speaker 1: or all the other. And that seems to be true
Speaker 1: in both humans and animals. But as much as we're
Speaker 1: constantly learning that animals are more complex than we thought
Speaker 1: they were, humans are just way, way, way way more complicated,
Speaker 1: and our sexual preferences and aversions and everything in between
Speaker 1: are just as complicated. So if there's a benefit to
Speaker 1: learning that animals experience same sex attraction or form same
Speaker 1: sex bonds, it's probably that the way we see gender
Speaker 1: is not foundational to sex. Sex was there first, and
Speaker 1: there's no natural law that demands that sex is exclusively
Speaker 1: between the male and female of a species anymore. Then
Speaker 1: there's one that says that the sex that your body
Speaker 1: displays at one point in your life has to be
Speaker 1: the sex that it displays for your whole life, or
Speaker 1: that your gender needs to be tied to that sex display,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is. There's no rule saying any
Speaker 1: of that right anywhere in nature, And I I think that's
Speaker 1: that's really the biggest thing here. We made that ship up.
Speaker 1: Someone was like wanting to make order out of chaos
Speaker 1: and control things, not even in a malicious like I'm
Speaker 1: controlling people, but just like you know, that human thing
Speaker 1: of like, ah, this doesn't make sense, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sense. Yeah, And it's not that like someone
Speaker 1: sat down with a rule book one day and was like,
Speaker 1: hair's I'm making gender up, you know, but it is
Speaker 1: something that we that developed and we exist in, so
Speaker 1: it matters. Um. But there's also not a rule book
Speaker 1: for it, right right, which means we can throw them
Speaker 1: out and start over and make it however we want.
Speaker 1: We're the top of the food change may do whatever
Speaker 1: we want now. Of course, for every person who says, look,
Speaker 1: same sex behavior is natural, there's some idiot bigot out
Speaker 1: there who says, oh, yeah, well some animals eat their babies,
Speaker 1: so I guess it's okay for people to do that too.
Speaker 1: And this is dumb, yes, but it it's also why
Speaker 1: some activists have pointed out that it's really better just
Speaker 1: to avoid the animal comparisons at all when you're talking
Speaker 1: about validating the human experience, right, Like James Essex said,
Speaker 1: whatever animals are or aren't doing quote shouldn't be the
Speaker 1: basis of moral judgment for humans. So the general consensus
Speaker 1: seems to be, or at least the one we're kind
Speaker 1: of finally reaching here, is that, yes, this kind of
Speaker 1: behavior in the animal kingdom is validating, maybe even empowering,
Speaker 1: but it's not really a direct parallel to sexuality in humans.
Speaker 1: In fact, this twenty nineteen study, which included queer biologists,
Speaker 1: said specifically, quote, we do not use terms such as
Speaker 1: heterosexual or homosexual to prevent any conflation between human sexuality
Speaker 1: and non human sexual behaviors. So they specifically say same
Speaker 1: sex sexual behavior and different sex sexual behavior in their study,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what we've tried to stick to
Speaker 1: here as well. So they're like, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: of what a person's sexuality is is not something you
Speaker 1: can relate to the animal that this animal is currently
Speaker 1: having sex with. Yeah. Yeah, and there's no like penguin
Speaker 1: euphoria show, there's not. You're experimenting and it means something
Speaker 1: this where the other way it just they just find
Speaker 1: a hole and they stick that minute. Okay, So we've
Speaker 1: talked this thing to death. So let's close out with
Speaker 1: one more fun sex fact about penguins, specifically the Adeli penguin,
Speaker 1: who are the true sexual deviance of the penguin world,
Speaker 1: really are so. Researchers Fiona Hunter and Lloyd Davis studied
Speaker 1: Adeli penguins mating habits for five years. These penguins build
Speaker 1: little nests out of small rocks and pebbles, but towards
Speaker 1: the end of the nesting season, things get warm on
Speaker 1: their Antarctic peninsula and there's a risk of flooding, so
Speaker 1: they want more and more pebbles to build up a
Speaker 1: strong nest. Well the colonies, they're all crammed together in
Speaker 1: the huge gathering. It looks like a big penguin music festival,
Speaker 1: like a little burning man. And on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: the colony there are usually a lot of single, desperate
Speaker 1: males who never got to breathe with's just dad um.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of chilling like an empty nest, hoping
Speaker 1: to meet some desperate lady penguin. It's like the club
Speaker 1: at the end of the night. It's like four am,
Speaker 1: and you're like it is left, oh no, oh no.
Speaker 1: So they're hanging out out there. They're kind of looking around,
Speaker 1: hoping for any stragglers at the club. I guess. So
Speaker 1: these inner colony female penguins will go out to the
Speaker 1: outskirts and let these male penguins have sex with them
Speaker 1: in exchange for a rock from their nest. And it
Speaker 1: is the first example of prostitute ship found in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. Incredible. Oh you gotta wonder what promises they're
Speaker 1: making too. She's just a gold digger. Oh no, do
Speaker 1: you think that? The you know, question is do the
Speaker 1: males know that this is a one time thing and
Speaker 1: exchange her rock? Or at least do they make you
Speaker 1: do the Did the female penguins make you believe it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do they play games at their hearts
Speaker 1: like Linda would? Linda would straight up can I her way?
Speaker 1: She would get whatever she needed to. She would no, no,
Speaker 1: you know what she would do is she would totally
Speaker 1: partner up with one of those penguins, take all of
Speaker 1: his rocks, and then go find someone new and kill him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, with a little poison or something, and then
Speaker 1: she's on the next one. That trifling bitch. Look, sometimes
Speaker 1: these female penguins will come out and just flirt to
Speaker 1: do their little mating dances, their little trumpeting bend over,
Speaker 1: look up coilie blood their actions huh. And then while
Speaker 1: the male is trumpeting back, they will just snatch a
Speaker 1: pebble and run up. Nope, there you go, girl, good
Speaker 1: for you. And they almost always exclusively do this too
Speaker 1: single unpartnered male penguins, because as Dr Hunter pointed out, quote,
Speaker 1: otherwise the partner female would beat the intruder up. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, these Adeli penguins are vicious and violent. There
Speaker 1: was this There was this study in nineteen fift by
Speaker 1: Dr George Murray Levick, and he went down to this
Speaker 1: island to study the Adeli penguins, and he could not
Speaker 1: publish his paper because it was so scandalous because the
Speaker 1: behavior he witnessed. And some of that was like some
Speaker 1: pretty nasty homophobia because he saw same sex pairings of
Speaker 1: the Deli penguins and was like, these perverts that they're
Speaker 1: base desires are taking over blah blah blah. But some
Speaker 1: of it was pretty horrific. Like he said, quote, I
Speaker 1: saw another act of astonishing depravity today a hen which
Speaker 1: had been in some way badly injured in the hind
Speaker 1: quarters was crawling painfully along her belly. I was just
Speaker 1: wondering whether I ought to kill her or not when
Speaker 1: a cock noticed her in passing and went up to her.
Speaker 1: After short inspection, he deliberately raped her. So pretty horrific
Speaker 1: story about these Adeli penguins. Well, no wonder the ladies
Speaker 1: are like, let's get my rock. Wins still get my rocks.
Speaker 1: They saw male penguins having sex with dead penguins, like
Speaker 1: just he said after this whole incident. In his notebook,
Speaker 1: he wrote, quote, there seems to be no crime too
Speaker 1: low for these penguins. Penguins are making up like look,
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom is full of non consensual sex and
Speaker 1: pretty horrific behavior and violence, of course, but you know,
Speaker 1: you go look at these cute little penguins. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy thought he was just gonna go watch the
Speaker 1: mating habits of the Adelhi penguin and saw true horrors. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: penguins turning of sex work is pretty great. I'd say,
Speaker 1: if you've got a product and you can sell it,
Speaker 1: then get what you're worth. The culture, get up there,
Speaker 1: penguin hut culture. I can respect that. BBC points out
Speaker 1: that other animals have been seen exchanging food for sex,
Speaker 1: but only within an existing partnership, and Dr Hunter said
Speaker 1: that the most stones she saw a single female penguin
Speaker 1: take in a three week mating period was sixty two,
Speaker 1: but she says she probably didn't even see them. All.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, this girl was working. She had her only
Speaker 1: fins on, only fins. Oh my god, Like, don't forget
Speaker 1: to subscribe. Incredible. Wow. I did not know any of
Speaker 1: this about penguins. There's so many of these animals. This
Speaker 1: is really fascinating. Look, sex is complicated in nature and
Speaker 1: also like completely uncomplicated too. That's kind of what I
Speaker 1: love about it is they're just like whatever, I like
Speaker 1: having sex. You down, I'm down, great, let's go do it. No,
Speaker 1: but I feel like you're right. It's so much more
Speaker 1: like it's just fun. I just enjoy it. I like
Speaker 1: to put my dick in things. I'm curious about what
Speaker 1: it does. I'm curious about what it's supposed to do
Speaker 1: and what it can do and why and when and how,
Speaker 1: and you know, just interesting to see that sort of
Speaker 1: exploration and curiosity and stuff like that in all these
Speaker 1: different species and learning how it's benefiting them right, you know,
Speaker 1: and to think like, you know, what experiences are we
Speaker 1: limiting for ourselves by being so trapped in our kind
Speaker 1: of like you said, sort of fabricated traditional beliefs about
Speaker 1: sex u or even thinking about like procreation, you know,
Speaker 1: propagation of the species or whatever. I remember seeing some
Speaker 1: conversation about that about people not, you know, choosing deliberately
Speaker 1: not to have children, and you know, people are like, well,
Speaker 1: why you know you're that's not the instinct is to
Speaker 1: have them, and you know, your people are worried about
Speaker 1: birth rates and ship like that for some reason. And
Speaker 1: I saw someone be like, you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: really great because now you have all these more adults
Speaker 1: that are interested in the kids, like more aunts and
Speaker 1: uncles that don't have their own kids, and so they
Speaker 1: can actually care about your kid. And it takes a community,
Speaker 1: you know, it takes a village to raise a child.
Speaker 1: So you you know, you're thinking about all of these
Speaker 1: other resources and time and love and energy that can
Speaker 1: be expended on kids because you're not having one of
Speaker 1: your own necessarily, right. That came up specifically in one
Speaker 1: of those studies about penguins where they said, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do kind of get the gay uncles in the
Speaker 1: in the penguin world where they contribute to the raising
Speaker 1: of young penguins, uh, like you said, without having their
Speaker 1: own that they're focused on, because penguins do kind of
Speaker 1: they have individual parents, but there is a community there
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: think about trying to set up your family unit in
Speaker 1: a different way, you know. And it's just again, it's
Speaker 1: all those things we're assuming and we're growing. We grow
Speaker 1: up with such cultural foundations that you're like never necessarily
Speaker 1: think about or choose to challenge. And it's okay if
Speaker 1: it works for you, um, the way it is, but
Speaker 1: it's not doesn't mean that you can't think about it
Speaker 1: differently or look at it and go, this could be
Speaker 1: different and what if it was, and how would that
Speaker 1: look and how might that be beneficial and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and allowing other people to do those things other ways
Speaker 1: to write, especially like who cares if you have completely
Speaker 1: doesn't affect you at all, as in literally anyone else's
Speaker 1: sexuality that you're not actively having sex with, like pretty
Speaker 1: much exactly no bearing whatsoever at all, none of your business,
Speaker 1: none of your business. Yeah, but but there is also
Speaker 1: like again it's there's just just something nice to take
Speaker 1: from it, but just not lean on it too hard,
Speaker 1: especially like James Essex says that he won't use this
Speaker 1: in legal cases. Right, He's not going to turn to
Speaker 1: animals when he's fighting for human rights in a legal
Speaker 1: case and say, well, penguins do it, so what's the problem?
Speaker 1: And it has been brought up in legal cases and
Speaker 1: beneficially in the past when the law specifically said. Some
Speaker 1: old laws were like homosexuals shouldn't homosexuality shouldn't exist because
Speaker 1: it does not exist in nature, and they were able
Speaker 1: to saying, hey, look yes it does. And they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, well now we have to come up with
Speaker 1: a new argument, which they always do, but we don't
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, exactly, So I probably shouldn't have said
Speaker 1: that in the first place. My mom said I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it, so no, you can't do it either. Well.
Speaker 1: I found this so fascinating and I hope you did too. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really interesting lessons to take out
Speaker 1: of this. Some of those lessons are don't take too
Speaker 1: much of a lesson from it either way. But um,
Speaker 1: but I love I love learning about animals. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love uh learning about anything that validates the l g
Speaker 1: B t Q I A plus experience And this is
Speaker 1: a really fun story. Yeah, where the challenges, you know,
Speaker 1: our assumptions Again, I really feel like that's what I'm
Speaker 1: taking most from this story is like, what are you
Speaker 1: not questioning that you could be questioning? And that's not
Speaker 1: to say you have to dismantle everything in your life,
Speaker 1: It's just like, why not look at it just for
Speaker 1: a minute and be like, is that how it has
Speaker 1: to be? I like, it is it serving me? Why?
Speaker 1: You know? Why is it like that? You know? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that's usually valuable. Then you're in evolution. Hey,
Speaker 1: brought it back to evolution. There you go. I'm so great. Well,
Speaker 1: we would love to keep evolving this show, and the
Speaker 1: best way we could do that is to get some
Speaker 1: feedback from you. Also, please send us your thoughts on
Speaker 1: all this, all these penguins and these animals that are
Speaker 1: out there having a whole lot more sex than we are,
Speaker 1: and give us your thoughts. You can reach us at
Speaker 1: ridic Romance at gmail dot com, that's right, or we're
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at dynamite boom. That's right,
Speaker 1: and I'm at oh great, it's Eli and the show
Speaker 1: is at ridic Romance and find us on TikTok at
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Romance as well. Thank you so much for spending
Speaker 1: time with us. We love hanging out with you all.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about all this fun stuff and we will
Speaker 1: have another good one for you next time. All right,
Speaker 1: see then, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks
Speaker 1: so listening to our show. Tell your friends name's Uncle
Speaker 1: Sandance to listen to a show Ridiculous roll Nance