Are penguins gay?

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

Penguins all look the same - maybe they just have sex with any convenient nearby penguin and if it happens to be a female then it results in a baby penguin.  I really don't have a clue what I'm talking about here but in the time-honoured tradition of these forums, I'm not going to let that get in the way of pontificating.

[Baron von Lotsov]

The trouble in saying things like that is that someone reading it somewhere in a British university zoology department will think, ah ha, that will the subject of my PhD thesis.

[Wiggles]

I felt I had to reply to this. Because penguins walk like they do doesn't mean they take it up the ar5e  

[Baron von Lotsov]

"Biology, a functional approach"



A 1970s textbook written by one M B V Roberts.



About a third of the way through it discusses the imprinting of behaviour and sexuality in mallards, some 11% of which get a little 'confused' about where to stick their dangly ducky bits.



The neurological and chemical issues there serve as quite an interesting basis for brain biochemistry studies....

Yes but you did say mallards, and mention confusion. There must be a lot of confusion in a bird's brain. I see some humans downsizing theirs.

[Streetwalker]

thinking about it by the way they walk I would say yes , the defiantly have a bit of the Barrymores about them

[patman post]

The unfairness is that if you were an LGBT teacher then you would be able to sell your jokes by force of the law.



Any purchasers unhappy with the science might then end up as the subject of anti-social behaviour law, or even, to see a by-law made in their name.



Do you know that in Manchester i have my own council gate? They had to build it to stop something that I organised!



Who will be the first to create anti-anti-LGBT by-laws?

But it's not a black and white issue...

[Baron von Lotsov]

The unfairness is that if you were an LGBT teacher then you would be able to sell your jokes by force of the law.



Any purchasers unhappy with the science might then end up as the subject of anti-social behaviour law, or even, to see a by-law made in their name.



Do you know that in Manchester i have my own council gate? They had to build it to stop something that I organised!



Who will be the first to create anti-anti-LGBT by-laws?

[patman post]

The Department of Education seems to think so, and it is so certain of this hypothesis that it is now textbook stuff. Let's start off by looking at two studies. ...........

If they are gay, I guess it makes it easier for you to p-p-p-pick up a penguin...

[Streetwalker]

Thought this was a new series of non PC penguin jokes . Oh well my favourite so far is



Why cant penguins fly





Because they are a chocolate biscuit

[johnofgwent]

"Biology, a functional approach"



A 1970s textbook written by one M B V Roberts.



About a third of the way through it discusses the imprinting of behaviour and sexuality in mallards, some 11% of which get a little 'confused' about where to stick their dangly ducky bits.



The neurological and chemical issues there serve as quite an interesting basis for brain biochemistry studies....

[Baron von Lotsov]

Here's a good one: "Same-sex pair-bonds are equivalent to male–female bonds in a life-long socially monogamous songbird"



It's the stuff our primary school kids find on their national curriculum, together with other important skills such as counting.



Do you ever get the hint our government are talking the piss with the money we allow them to spend on our children's future?



No legitimate private corporation would ever need to know what a bloody songbird does in its spare time. This is state-funded research.



Back when they did the expedition to the Antarctica in 1910 they appear to have had far more sense on what is worthy of publishing.

[johnofgwent]

Sod whether penguins are gay or not.



Click the link, scroll down and take a look at the CITATIONS



There are people getting paid RESEARCH FUNDS to investigate the pleasures of roadkill ...



There are no words.



Other than perhaps how to i apply for one of these research grants. Not that I particularly wish to pursue this research, but it seems to me i could make up any old bollix and the journal would swallow it...

[Baron von Lotsov]

The Department of Education seems to think so, and it is so certain of this hypothesis that it is now textbook stuff. Let's start off by looking at two studies.



"A previously unpublished four-page pamphlet by Dr. George Murray Levick R.N. (1876–1956) on the 'Sexual habits of the Adélie penguin' was recently rediscovered at the Natural History Museum (NHM) at Tring. It was printed in 1915 but declined for publication with the official expedition reports. The account, based upon Levick's detailed field observations at Cape Adare (71°18′S, 170°09′E) during the course of the British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910, commented on frequency of sexual activity, autoerotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex and homosexual behaviour. His observations were however accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication. Here we publish the pamphlet in its entirety, reinterpret selected observations and comment on its significance as a forgotten work by the pioneer of research on Adélie penguin Pygoscelis adeliae (Hombron and Jacquinot 1841) biology."



https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/polar-record/article/dr-george-murray-levick-18761956-unpublished-notes-on-the-sexual-habits-of-the-adelie-penguin/8647660D29AD9660C9C16623638C9116">https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 23638C9116">https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/polar-record/article/dr-george-murray-levick-18761956-unpublished-notes-on-the-sexual-habits-of-the-adelie-penguin/8647660D29AD9660C9C16623638C9116



"More than 50 yr ago, field studies recorded the same‐sex pairs (and trios) of penguins displaying to each other during the mating season, using behavior patterns typical of heterosexual mating displays. Such observations led to a hypothesis that due to a lack of sex recognition pairing occurs at random with respect to sex, an idea countered by the argument that sex recognition is highly accurate. No quantification of same‐sex mating displays has tested the frequency of such displays in penguins or tested the hypothesis of random display partners with respect to sex. During their mating season, we studied displaying and paired king penguins, Apenodytes patagonicus, at Kerguelen Island and sexed them using a DNA marker, to quantify any occurrence of this behavior. Indeed, same‐sex courtship displays were common (28.3% of 53 displaying pairs), the great majority of which were between males. Some homosexually displaying males eventually paired with females, but such males were significantly slower in heterosexual pairing than males that did not display homosexually. In two extraordinary cases, same‐sex pairs learned each other's calls, an essential step in the pairing process. The frequency of such pairs was much lower than among displaying couples, significantly so for males. Finally, the frequency of homosexually displaying pairs was significantly lower than expected from random assortment of displaying birds, for both males and females. We examined possible explanations for same‐sex display and its biological significance. A population sex‐ratio bias in favor of males and high concentration of male sex hormones may help to explain non‐reproductive homosexually displaying pairs."



https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1439-0310.2010.01835.x">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... 10.01835.x">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1439-0310.2010.01835.x





They might have ruled out the obvious here. Penguins live in very cold places and they are warm-blooded, hence if you see two males huddled up against teach other, it might well be that they are just trying to keep warm.