Re: Natural Homosexuality
Posted by Amaranth Rose on Apr 06, 2004 at 08:00
(65.172.150.7)Re: Natural Homosexuality (Tulse)
Thank you for your thoughtful and very well thought out reply. It's good to see you back again. I'm glad you found something of value in what I wrote. Ich lebe, Ich dien.
I didn't put in much about insects, lizards, fish, etc. due to time and space constraints and because the initial topic was mammals (Ovis aries, domestic sheep). I didn't think most people were ready to hear that their guppies or swordtails could change sex on them in the fishbowl; I didn't want a bunch of people flushing their fish in fright. I'm not into piscine purges.
I did come across more information on birds, and I gave some thought to including it, but I ultimately decided against it. I decided against including about 2/3 of what I found, actually, on that basis that it overlapped, was redundant, or not really exactly relevant to the topic which I didn't want to broaden any further due to time constraints.
While I appreciate your remarks about birds, and monogamy being found frequently among marine birds, I'd counterpoint with a couple of snippets. First, there are a number of marine bird, gulls, plovers, sandpipers, pelicans, anhingas, cormorants, and the like, about which I found no information. Some of these I'm fairly certain mate only for one season, the others I'm not sure. I know that herons, at least the ones we get around here, the greater and lesser blue and the white, seem to mate for life or at least a long time. Sandhill and whooping cranes, some of the largest birds in North America, mate for life, and they're right noisy about it. It seems in general the bigger the bird, the more likely they will mate for life.
Also, buzzards and vultures are definitely not marine birds. Those are sand dunes, not waves. :-) Raptors in general seem to mate for life but at a later age than songbirds. There may be no significance in that, but it's an interesting observation.
At any rate, I wan't trying to stir anyone up, or offend anyone, though I seem to have a knack for that sort of thing. I was just looking to present "the facts, Ma'am, just the facts," as they used to say.