Posted on 01/29/2015 4:50:24 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
A small team of researchers with the University of Ulm's Institute of Experimental Ecology in Germany has found an evolutionary explanation for same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) in burying beetles.....
.... if a male burying beetle has difficulty determining if another beetle is male or female (which is does because gender identification with such beetles is difficult to determine) and if it is clear that there are few females around, than the males become less discriminating and will attempt to mate with whatever female or male beetle they find—because it increases the likelihood of passing on their genes (with male/female copulation, of course).
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
I swear I almost posted this under Humor.
evolution + homosexuality = extinction
Yeah, I don’t get it either.
If people are going to assert that bugs and Men are in any way comparable then I don’t know what the hell to tell them.
The roll of the dice plan doesn’t sound so effective as just plain lucky.
Plus beetles just aren’t all that bright.
I understand your dilemma. The conclusions drawn by these “scientists” are laughable.
You’d have to be monumentally stupid, or a democrat, to classify the instinctive, indiscriminate sexual behavior exhibited by these beetles as “homosexual”. This is not real science - this is political-pseudo-science.
PS - Please excuse the unnecessary redundancy at the beginning of my 2nd paragraph.
Just as in many studied animals, homosexuality is triggered by environment, not by a genetic predisposition. The evidence is overwhelming that the LGBT lobby is incorrect. People are not “born” homosexual. As the resident said, “It is a choice”.
I don’t care about a beetle who can’t tell the difference between a male beetle and a female beetle. My youngest son knows the difference between a male and a female. As he says one has a tab, the other a slot.
Bingo. This has to be one of the more stupid bits of research published. They imply there is an actual thought process going on with an insect when insects operate on stimulus / response. Repeating the same response for the same stimulus, endlessly. They don't learn, they don't consider.
Next year's headline...
Scientists say that more beetles die from trying to scr** a rock than any other cause.
A lot of the lower order animals are hermaphrodites or gender shifters. It has nothing to do with conscious decisions.
This phenomenon has been observed for decades. In environments where opposite-sex participants are scarce, such as prisons, work camps, boarding schools, military training facilities, homosexual activity occurs at a much higher frequency than it does in the general population.
However, these are abnormal situations, and it is this very abnormality that defeats the argument that homosexuality is somehow “natural.”
Wouldn’t the experiment be more accurate if male beetles rejected females when there were equal numbers of both sexes? This seems to show that male beetles want sex, and if there aren’t enough females available they will turn to each other (because they can’t pleasure themselves, perhaps).
It’s like staging your experiment in a prison and saying criminals are homosexual
Ri-i-i-i-ght.
The evolutionary answer is that homosexual behavior - if it were rooted in genetics - is ‘terminate this experiment.’ The entire point of evolutionary genetics is to pass on successful genes. Not a good tactic if you are driven to deposit your genetic material in the dumpster.
Burying beetles are transsexual? Or just confused?
So, in other words, they are homosexual because they are too stupid to see their genes won’t pass on.
I fully support this finding.
so basically...if ya screw everything and anything, you have a better chance of procreating....
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