(Read the article here )
At first I thought it was a joke. We're experimenting on homosexual animals to learn why people are homosexual? I didn't know animals could even have a sexual preference. I can see it on the cover of NEWSWEEK now, "GAY SHEEP: The secret world of Baa-aad animals"
What will knowledge of an animal's sexual preference do for society?This sort of research may lead to insights into human behavior, or it may not. Human beings are animals, so studying other animals (and especially other mammals) can sometimes tell us things about ourselves. Also, sex is something that goes pretty deep into the pre-human parts of ourselves. However, our ancestors diverged from those of sheep a long time ago, so it’s not like you can just immediately generalize from sheep to people, and no one seems to be saying that you can.
Scientists have to study a lot of different things in order to make basic advances in knowledge. Some of those things will really pan out, and some will forever be interesting footnotes, and you generally can’t tell which is going to be which very easily before you start.
You’ve never heard of lesbian seagulls?
In science class a while ago, we saw this video about deep sea animals. And amazingly, there was erm… a clip about two different species of male octopuses “coupling.” My science teacher said that the most amazing thing about it was not that they were both male (it happens often in the animal kingdom), but that they are from two different species.
It seems to me that interspecies mating is quite common between humans and sheep based on the repeated allusions to it that I’ve heard over the years.
I thought that the point of this study is that the authors compared certain structures in the brains of homo- and heterosexual sheep and found consistent differences (they’re trying to relate behavior to physiology). Your chances of getting groups of homo- and heterosexual humans in good health to volunteer to have their brains dissected are not high.
I feel a Utah joke coming on…
“Utah! Where men are men, and sheep are nervous.”
Gay sheep, the men who love them and the furious wives who are left behind!!, next on Geraldo!
While looking for such differences in brain structure is interesting, it needs to be noted that only humans enculturate themselves (use learned symbols to detirmine their own behavior). Finding out which behaviors are learned and which ones are instinctual (in humans) would be a good starting place.
“Utah! Where, when they speak of having a black sheep in the family, they mean it.”
OK, I’ll stop now, I promise.