kreuz that example is way too hypothetical and you know it lol.

you could also argue from an evolutionary standpoint that maximizing the hetero male population results in a better final result of survival of the fittest.

but im still interested in your original example. please link the study, sounds neat.

anywho, since all herd animals are gay, then there has to be an evolutionary advantage of having a small percentage of gay people. we only have to figure out what it is.

and the example of brothers is just a verson of the real example. where there is a few gay dudes in a group of 2-300 individuals, increasing the fitness of the entire group.

oh, and the standard textbook on this theme is called "Biological Exuberances. Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Bruce Bagemihl (1999)

Ignorance at its finest. Cheers skrum.

skrumgaer wrote
at 11:25 AM, Wednesday May 16, 2012 CDT
Knowing that the offspring you are taking care of is yours is the deciding aspect of marriage.

Can we have a separate thread to discuss this without skrum? I can't bring to myself to participate here in a constructive way anymore. It just hurts.

i propose that freddie mercury not be allowed in the new thread either.

pretty homo/aids-phobic of you monte.

mr K - I was also thinking about the evolutionary pressures as they relate to sexuality the other day. Quite the coincidence that you brought them up here as well.

Our little microbial friends provide some interesting ideas about how sexual reproduction relates to evolution and natural selection. There are numerous bacteria and fungi that vary their reproductive strategies based on plentiful versus limited resources. Many organisms reproduce asexually and quite rapidly in the presence of abundant natural resources, and only switch to sexual reproduction once resources become scarce. The evolutionary advantage is pretty obvious, scarce resources require more genetic diversity in order to rapidly adapt to environmental stresses. Evolutionary theory proposes that complex organisms exclusively use sexual reproduction cycles due to the complexity of the organisms and long gestation times which makes the presence of genetic diversity that much more important since rapid adaptation to natural stresses becomes more difficult.

So nature shows us that varying sexual reproduction is one of the strategies that some species use to maintain their viability. Homosexuality creates a bit of a paradox - how could it be selected for when it leads to less chance of reproductive success for the homosexual?

One interesting theory that supports what Mr K is saying has to do with "Fraternal birth order effect" which has shown that a homosexual male is more likely to have an older male sibling than not. Perhaps evolution has selected for a multi-factorial gene that promotes homosexuality in subsequent males to help improve the fitness of the family/clan. I'm not sure how same-sex female relationships fit into the picture but it could be similar.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this type of theory but this was how I tied it together in my own mind based on what I had learned about homosexuality in my classes.

Further reading on fraternal birth order effect can be found here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_sexual_orientation#Fraternal_birth_order_effect

Since this appears to be Literature Review Week, here is my contribution:

https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=esam06&paper_id=164