by Laura M
There was an interesting article at ScienceNews.org about bisexual giant hissing cockroaches. Lab tests showed that twenty percent of the males attempted to court and attract other males by means of hissing gently and making thrusting gestures. Curiously enough, it was observed that this same twenty percent also mated with females with “unusual ardor.” The article described this correlation between the same-sex interaction and the “intense courtship” with females as the Libido syndrome. Results revealed that the amount of young produced tended to be substantially larger when a female mated with a bisexual male partner. David Logue leads this study at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. He hypothesizes that perhaps the resulting “abundance of young could end up explaining why this male courtship persists.” Logue suggests that perhaps this is occurring for evolutionary purposes.
I found this article to be very interesting. I have read other articles about animals, such as giraffes, displaying homosexual or bisexual behavior. None of those articles ever discussed these behaviors from an evolutionary standpoint. This article discusses how these occurrences could possibly be positively effecting the survival and continuation of this species.
I think this is interesting too. I would have never thought of animals as being bisexual or homosexual. I don’t really understand the whole evolutionary stand point because male anything cannot get pregnant by having sex with another male thing. So to me that suggestion does not make sense, then again I have not studied it for a long period of time, so I really have no jurisdiction on the subject.
By: Caitlin R on September 7, 2008
at 5:34 pm