No sex please, we’re Proboscis Monkeys

More from Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl. The Proboscis Monkey and its extraordinary nose lives in Borneo. The species is regarded as vulnerable, one stage away from being endangered.

Proboscis groups are centred around a polygamous male with several adult female mates, although males have little say in the group’s social life or decision making. Female relationships hold the group together and most friendly or aggressive interactions take place between females. You could possibly conceptualise it from a less patriarchal and heteronormative viewpoint as a group of females who maintain a single male partner that they agree to share. Sometimes the “excess” males band together in all-male troops.

Both males and females take part in homosexual activity, although neither heterosexual and homosexual advances are always welcomed and the aggressor will try to force them. But sexual activity of any orientation is fairly rare. In one study, there were only 12 mountings in a whole year, two of which (17%) were same-sex. 28% of all adult males never have heterosexual relations because they live in all-male groups. Proboscis Monkeys will even try to stop others having sex. Attempted heterosexual copulations gather audiences who try to disrupt the mating pair by climbing on them, pulling the male’s nose, making noises, or making distracting movements. It’s like a mashup of monkey porn and Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus)

Homosexuality: Female & Male Behaviours: Affectionate, Sexual, Pair-bonding Ranking: Incidental Observed: Wild, Captivity

(See It’s Gay Animal Fortnight for an explanation of this box.)

Next time on Gay Animal Fortnight… Boy Flycatchers who like Boy Flycatchers who act like Girl Flycatchers.

Original Proboscis Monkey image from Wikipedia Commons.

Planet of the Lesbian Macaques

More from Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl. Unfortunately the appealing and somewhat internet famous Japanese Macaques are an endangered species. In the wild they live in forests and on mountainsides. I met a load of these Macaques who live at Arashiyama near Kyoto. They’re about a meter (3 feet) long. Their groups are between 20-100 strong. In large numbers they were more terrifying than adorable. I particularly remember a viewing area where it was safer and more practical to cage the humans and let the monkeys grip the mesh to look in.

Female Macaques form “consortships”, temporary but exclusive pair bonds based on mutual sexual attraction. The two females spend every possible moment together once they’ve bonded. There are seven different sexual positions in homosexual copulation, and they most definitely use them all. Females will actively compete and fight with Macaques of both sexes for access to their chosen female partners. Heterosexual partnerships rarely last beyond the mating season, and the homosexual consortships don’t last more than a few weeks either although unlike the heterosexual partners the female couple will remain friends. In effect female Macaques are serially monogamous. Incest is taboo, but consortships may otherwise be between females of any age.

Japanese Macaque (Macaca fuscata)

Homosexuality: Female & Male Behaviours: Courtship, Affectionate, Sexual, Pair-bonding Ranking: primary Observed: Wild, Semiwild, Captivity

(See It’s Gay Animal Fortnight for an explanation of this box.)

It’s Gay Animal Fortnight

What’s that? You never heard about this carnival of homosexual, bisexual and transvestite animals? (That I just made up.) So sad… some people have a sheltered upbringing. Because there are definitely gay and, yes, even intersexual or transvestite animals throughout the world and there always have been. Sorry about that, bigots and religious nuts, but to adopt a phrase already in circulation: DEAL WITH IT.

It’s documented in thousands of scientific papers, even though a shameful number of scientists themselves have not been averse to clutching their pearls and squeamishly claiming not to see what their own data unequivocally shows. In 1999 Bruce Bagemihl did the world a great service by compiling and summarising this evidence for the ubiquity of non-reproductive (hetero- and homo-) sexual practices throughout the natural world in his mammoth 750-page Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. It’s an exploration of possible evolutionary and biological explanations for the fact that a spectrum of sexual behaviour and gender identity exists in almost every species; a far cry from the scientifically and logically unsupportable view that a heterosexual majority means any individual with a different sexual or gender identity is therefore abnormal. It’s not always even true that the majority of individuals are heterosexual in some species. I don’t know why I find it so funny, but Bagemihl’s deadpan assertion that “the majority of male manatees are probably bisexual” always cracks me up. Many other animals have far more sex with their own gender than they ever do with heterosexual mates, as we shall see.

The book also doubles as a methodical but weirdly entertaining catalogue not only of real-life and empirically confirmed bi-curious manatees, but also of lion benders and gay ostrich dance clubs. I’ve picked out a few and I’ll be posting them during Gay Animal Fortnight alongside the other random stupid stuff.

Let’s start Gay Animal Fortnight with our cousins, the sex-mad Bonobos. If you’re offended by descriptions of sexual acts between (mostly) consenting animals… well, firstly you’re weird and you’re probably projecting your own hangups rather than genuinely seeing anything shocking. You should just relax a bit. This is the blog where James Joyce’s jaw-droppingly dirty letters reign supreme, after all. But if you know you’re offended by this kind of thing, then just don’t read any further.

Macaque threat

Fixed stare, open mouth, head bobbing. From a 1974 children’s book by Michael Boorer, The Life of Monkeys and Apes. I’m a big fan of the the fellow on the right, the siamang. I wish I had special vocal sacs.