11 Animal Species That Prove Being Gay Is Natural

There are still people out there who think that being gay is “unnatural,” but they couldn’t be more wrong. Same-sex behavior, from co-parenting to mate-attraction behavior to sex, is incredibly common in the animal world. It’s been observed in more than 1,500 animal species, from insects and other invertebrates, right up the evolutionary ladder to primates and us.

For the most part, we’re not sure why—what evolutionary advantage does homosexual coupling provide to dolphins (other than happier dolphins)? But the fact is, same-sex activity is as natural as anything in the animal kingdom. What’s really unnatural is that so many people still assume animals adhere to the “moral” code of a small number of humans—so if you happen to run into anyone like that, point them to this list of the 11 most gay animals on earth.

Bonobos, a species of great apes native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are the hippies of the animal kingdom. They share about 99% of their DNA with humans, and they’re gay as hell. Well, more accurately, they’re bi as hell. Both male and female bonobos engage sex for pleasure (a rarity among animals) and group sex, and both sexes are cool with getting it on with members of the same sex. In fact, all female bonobos have sex with other females, and are more likely to have sex with other females than males. Similar behavior is seen in other primates, too.

Dolphins are among the smartest animals, and the sexiest. Homosexual sex has been observed in a number of dolphin species, but has been studied most thoroughly in bottlenose dolphins. Pairs of male bottlenose dolphins swim together, belly to belly, rubbing their dolphin junk together and sometimes inserting themselves into their friends’ genital slits and anuses. Female bottlenose dolphins engage in “beak-genital propulsion,” where one female slips her beak into the genital opening of another, and they both swim gently forward. Romantic!

Giraffe sex is more gay than straight. Male giraffes court each other, mount each other, and get off with other males way more frequently than they do with females—up to 90% of giraffe couplings are male to male. Scientists are divided as to whether this mating behavior is loving or aggressive, though. In comparison, female giraffes only get busy with other females about 1% of the time.

Both male and female lions have been observed exhibiting homosexual behavior. Males and females will bond with others of their same sex by nuzzling and licking each other, and males have been known to mount up on their bros, too. Lions’ distant relatives—house cats—exhibit the same kinds of behaviors, with some cats seeming to prefer the company of their own sex over the opposite sex.

While countless species exhibit sexual behavior that could be thought of as sexually fluid, domesticated sheep seem to have something like a sexual orientation. Many male sheep will mount both sexes, but about 10% of male sheep refuse to mate with females altogether. They will happily mate with other rams, though. This has mostly been observed in domesticated sheep, where it’s a real issue for breeders.

“Alternative” sexuality is obviously common in modern humans across many different cultures, but it’s not new. The oldest evidence of a (maybe) gay man dates back to 2900 to 2500 years ago. In 2011, archeologists unearthed a copper age skeleton of a male buried in the style associated with females—he had jugs instead of weapons. Since funerary practices were so important to these ancient people, it probably wasn’t an accident, and scientists speculate that it could have been because he was gay or trans. (Although, we don’t actually know for sure.)

Penguins are adorable for their bowlegged walk, little tuxedos, and their domestic habits. Zoos all over the world have reported same-sex penguin couples—most famously, Roy and Silo, a pair of male chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo who adopted a rock and tried to hatch it. Keepers gave them an actual egg, and they hatched that and raised the resulting chick. Things got more complicated for the couple later.

It’s not just “higher” animals that are bisexual; snakes get busy with members of their own sex, as well, or at least show behavior humans might call “queer.” Garter snakes, gopher snakes, and rattlesnakes all exhibit “queer” behavior of various types, but the gayest of all are flower pot snakes, all of whom are female. These are single, successful reptiles who don’t need no man-snake.

There’s tons of scientific evidence of same-sex behavior among various varieties of bears, but my favorite specific example is detailed in a study entitled “Fellatio in captive brown bears: Evidence of long-term effects of suckling deprivation?” The research was collected after scientists observed a couple of horny bears at a Croatian zoo who “engaged in recurrent fellatio multiple times per day.” According to the study, “The provider always initiated the contact involving vigorous penile sucking that appeared to result in ejaculation.”

Bed bugs, the worst animals on earth, reproduce through “traumatic insemination,” where the male pierces his aedeagus through the female’s abdomen and inserts his sperm in the open wound. But bedbugs don’t care whose abdomen they stab with their penises, so they’ll go ahead and stick it in males, too. Because male bedbugs haven’t developed the counteradaptive measures of female bedbugs, it’s just a bad scene for them. Serves them right for being bedbugs, I guess, but it’s all too horrific to think about for long.

Back in 2009, outraged Polish politician Michael Grzes sputtered, “We didn’t pay 37 million zlotys for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there!” But they had paid 37 million zlotys for just that.

The elephant in question, Ninio, was 10 years old and was transferred to the Polish zoo because he couldn’t get along with the females at his old home. True to form, he preferred male elephants over females, and just as Grzes feared, Ninio seems to have never procreated. He did, however, have his tusks removed in 2019.