Is LGBTQ+ behavior in nature against nature? Let's look at the facts!

"This is going against nature!" someone sometimes gets angry in an online discussion. But is it true?

What humans have come up with and what nature knew long before us is the subject of scientific research. And it is thanks to research that we know that sexual behavior between animals of the same sex is not unique to rational humans, but to more than 1,500 other creatures !

And that's not all: the animal kingdom also knows more than two genders and their changes. We don't have time to list all the animals, but we can say something about the cutest of them:

Penguins

The British navigator George Murray Levick, who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, already knew that penguins mate not only in male-female pairs, but also in male-male and female-female pairs. He was so horrified by the cute birds' behavior that he preferred to write his findings about their sexuality in his diary in Greek script so that the public would not learn about them. However, he was not lucky, and about a hundred years later his memoirs were published by the scientific journal Polar Record , which deals with research in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Perhaps the most famous queer penguins are Roy and Silo, two males at the New York Zoo. Zoo staff noticed them courting each other, one of them even trying to sit on a rock, so the two birds were given a real egg containing a male penguin whose biological parents were unable to care for him. They hatched a chick, named Tango, after whom the children's book And Tango Makes Three is named.

Snails

The snail is a so-called hermaphrodite creature, which means it has both male and female reproductive organs. What's more, they can even reproduce with themselves !

This is perhaps sometimes a better option than finding a mating partner. Snail sex is far from romantic: after courtship, the two creatures cling to each other and start shooting knife-shaped needles at each other. Their goal is to prevent the other snail from ejaculating into the first . The loser of the two bears the eggs.

Bonobo chimpanzees

Bonobos have a reputation as peaceful primates who settle any disputes with sex, without caring at all about what their opponent has between their legs.

On the other hand, they do have some differences between the sexes: these chimpanzees live in a matriarchal society, meaning that they are ruled by females. The status of individual males then depends on the status of their mother.

Which are also situations in which some violence does occur among bonobos: when a female attacks a lower-ranking male .

Oyster

These sea creatures probably have no chance of experiencing gender dysphoria, not only because they don't know gender, but also because they can change gender on their own.

However, oysters don't change sex every day. In fact, they change sex on average twice a season .

Lions

And now there will be a final battle, or rather a battle.

When we think of lions, we imagine males with majestic manes, surrounded by females who go hunting... and who are maneless.

However, recently, examples have been appearing in the media of lionesses becoming indistinguishable from lions . When they mate with males, it looks as if two males are having sex. However, the opposite is true.

There's only one thing to say to that: queens, slaaaay!