A team of imperial college london has found that homosexual behavior in macaque monkeys is widespread and hereditary. The researchers have come to this conclusion after observing a wild colony of macaques for three years.
In view of the data, the article, published this Monday in Nature Ecology and Evolutionsuggests that homosexual behavior may be a result of evolution and a common feature of primate reproduction.
Based on observations and genetic data, the study refutes the belief that homosexual behavior between males of the same species (SSB) is something rare in non-human animals that occurs only under unusual conditions.
However, for Jackson Cliveof Imperial’s Georgina Mace Center for the Living Planet and first author of the study, this study demonstrates that “most males behave bisexually and that variation in same-sex activity is heritable.”
For the authors, this means that the behavior may have an evolutionary basis and that the males that copulated with each other were more likely to lean into conflict: “Perhaps this could be one of the many social benefits of same-sex sexual activity,” says Clive.