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Gay snakes?

D

danielmcginty

New member
Just a quick question. If two males are put together after brumation will they try to mate each other? As I obtained two snakes (under impression of m and f) and am watching them mating right now (well at least attempting to) and the 'female' seems to be taking the role of what the male would normally do, and then the 'male' does a bit of leading. So what do you reckon?
 
Yeah there is-watch Ricky Gervais 'Animals' DVD-very funny man. That wasn't my point though the titles a joke-my question is; Will the snakes, if kept solitary throughout the year, when placed with the same sex after brumation try to mate or do the mating jerks?
 
I believe that when two males or two females have this kind of reaction to each other, it is more of a dominance/territorial thing.

It's not that they are trying to breed, although I have seen a male corn lock with a male corn. I had a trio together for breeding...1 male and 2 females (or so I thought). It turned out that one of the "females" was actually a male. The bigger male had breeding on his mind and because he could "smell" the female, he thought he was breeding her.
 
King21 said:
I am pretty sure there is no such thing as gay animals, but i could be wrong.
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hee hee. Certainly, there are no such things as gay animals, because gayness is a cultural construct of humans. Even in humans, though, sexuality is much more a spectrum than a dichotomy. If our culture weren't so set on sexual monogamy and on categorizing people one way or the other, gayness would probably not be so much of an issue. There are many cultures in which it is perfectly acceptable and even considered a part of a man's sexual maturation to have sex with other men.

There are only a very few cases of animals in which an individual is apparently ONLY attracted to the same sex (of course, sexual monogamy of any kind is vanishingly rare in non-humans (and some maybe would argue the same for humans)). However there is a host of documented homosexual activity in the animal kingdom. Some of it seems to be related to dominance displays, like when your male dog mounts another or when your female dog mounts any dog. However, this is not the case for all of it. There are plenty of articles written on it, but I don't have time to look them up right now. But if you're interested in an exemplar of an animal characterized by sexual freedom and no boundaries, google-scholar bonobos. (Sometimes called "pygmy chimpanzees," though that's a misnomer.) That lineage of our closest living relatives really challenges the idea of defined categories of sexuality! And apparently, they have a good time doing it. Just by the by, I have personally seen two male juvenile "common" chimpanzees--well, I don't want to be too graphic and get suspended--but lets just say they were taking very good care of each other and are in the habit of doing so! Now if you presented them with an estrous female, I'm sure they would be just as happy about that!

Happy researching! I actually find this to be a very interesting topic, and yet another that shows that humans are not quite as unique in the animal kingdom as we often think we are.

stephanie
 
I have to disagree with you a little there Stephanie.

There is a flock of penguins in a zoo (Belgium or Holland or someplace around there) where a number of the males have formed bonds that mimic the pairing bonds that a male and female penguin will make when choosing a reproductive mate. Even when separated and put with females, they show no interest in the females and then get back together with the same sex partner when reintroduced.

A study was done on sheep a number of years ago where a group of observers watched a flock of sheep and wrote down which animals mated with which animals and so on. When the brains of these sheep were dissected, there were physiological differences between the brains of the rams who mated with rams and the brains of the rams who mated with ewes.


Recently it has been found (read an article in a science journal on it) that in humans, homosexuality is likely to be caused to the fetus' exposure to certain hormones at specific times during gestation.


BACK TO THE TOPIC!

Male snakes will mate with other male snakes as a sign of dominance but obviously, female snakes have to hemipenes, so whilst they can physically dominate another snake by crawling all over them, they have nothing to insert!
 
LOL! I forgot about those penguins and have heard about the sheep. Keep in mind that most of the homosexuality research--hormonal, genetic, etc.--has only been done on men. :-offtopic

prenatal exposure to hormones, though, is a promising area. it's known to be linked to lots of things in non-human primates and within the range of variation considered to be normal in humans, has even found to be correlated with play styles (girly girls vs tomboys) in 3 and a half year old girls.
 
danielmcginty said:
Yeah there is-watch Ricky Gervais 'Animals' DVD-very funny man.
Click to expand...

:roflmao: :roflmao: I KNEW someone would bring this up.
"Here,... are two male stump-tailed macaques, in the middle of mutual fellatio.....*sigh* I don't know why they're doing that.."
 
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