Talk:Animal sexual behaviour/Archive 5

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Abnormal animal sexual behaviour

This article has become filled with quotes, anecdotes and case studies of abnormal sexual behaviour in animals. This is seriously compromising the respectability of this article which should have a much greater emphasis on normal sexual behaviour. For example, there are countless mentions of incidences of homosexuality, necrophilia, fetishes, etc!. For goodness sake! There is an entire article called Homosexual behavior in animals. The examples in this article will be moved there or deleted so that the focus can be on a much more encyclopaedic and representative presentation of (normal) animal sexual behaviour. Other examples include inter-specific matings. These should be in a separate article Interspecific mating in animals or at the very least, if it is to remain in this article, it should be under a sub-heading "Abnormal" rather than being given undue weight leading the naive reader to think this is normal behaviour.__DrChrissy (talk) 22:17, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

DrChrissy, homosexual behavior in non-human animals is not necessarily abnormal, as is made clear in the Homosexual behavior in animals article. Furthermore, moving any homosexual content from this article to that article would be redundant, since that article already covers all of the content mentioned in this one. This article should have a decent amount of homosexuality content, and that content should be presented in a WP:Summary style manner, pointing people to the Homosexual behavior in animals article for in-depth material. The other content should also be well-presented in this article, with a link pointing to the main articles for those topics if they have main articles. We do not need a separate article for all of this content. We should ideally only create WP:Spinouts when needed. And before creating a WP:Spinout, you should see if the matter can be adequately covered in an existing article (for example, by creating an "Other animals" section) or if there is an article specifically about the topic among non-human animals. Flyer22 (talk) 22:51, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

This depends on the definition of what is "normal" and what is not (i.e. "abnormal"). I prefer to use an objective, statistical approach with knowledge of the species ethogram, rather than relying on undue weight on anecdotes etc. As you have said, moving any homosexual content from this article to Homosexual behavior in animals would be redundant because it is already there. Therefore, that makes this information redundant on this article. I agree, a summary section is needed on this article with a

Main article: [[:Homosexual behavior in animals]]

included.__DrChrissy (talk) 23:05, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it depends on what one's definitions of normal and abnormal are. I also see that you added an Abnormal behaviour section to the article. But just so we're clear, I made the above statement based on my knowledge of non-human animal sexual behavior, what WP:Reliable sources state on the matter, and how we should go about Wikipedia policies and guidelines. As for WP:Undue weight, my user page is clear that I don't engage in it. Anyway, going back to what is abnormal, scientists of today are clear that non-human animal sexual behavior is not as "normal" as scientists of the past once thought it to be. What is in this article about homosexuality is not necessarily redundant to what is in the Homosexual behavior in animals article. The same goes for other topics in the article that you would perhaps categorize as abnormal non-human animal sexual behavior. Of course, in the case of the topics that have Wikipedia articles, there is going to be some redundancy...since these aspects, per WP:Summary style (and per common knowledge on creating a comprehensive article), should be addressed in this article. Flyer22 (talk) 23:38, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd prefer that no information be deleted completely. We have another article about non-reproductive behavior called Animal co-opted sexual behavior, so certain details could be merged there if necessary (though I'm fine with the current state). Since that title is not very intuitive, it could be moved to Non-reproductive sexual behavior in animals. Also, this looks like WP:SYNTH. KateWishing (talk) 23:49, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

How can this possibly be WP:SYNTH! I quote numbers. I do not use any words such as "only" or "a small minority". I simply quote the number of total species of animals for the reader to form their own conclusions. Please don't worry about deletions of information from this article. Flyer22 has already reassured us above that all information is contained in another article which clearly makes detailed discussion on here, redundant.__DrChrissy (talk) 00:22, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Why mention the total number of species if not to imply some conclusion about the prevalence of homosexual behavior? The original source uses the 1500 figure to suggest that homosexual behavior is common, but you have presented it in a way that implies it's rare. It's misleading because the sexual behavior of most species has not been described at all.

Apart from homosexual behavior, there's also masturbation, oral sex, interspecies sex, necrophilia, fetishism, erotica, and sex with juveniles. This information is notable and should be preserved either here or somewhere else. KateWishing (talk) 01:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Two comments. I think DrChrissy is right to be concerned about the article losing balance with an over-emphasis on non-procreative sexual behaviours. Surely the core business of sexual behaviour is to do with the continuation of the species, and the article should not be unduly manipulated by editors pushing other issues. On the other hand, non-procreative sexual behaviours should receive due acknowledgement, and given their fair due. Such behaviours are not uncommon amongst animals, including humans, and there are probably sound evolutionary reasons for many of them. Sexuality is a very sensitive area for humans. In the context of this particular article, I do not agree at all with the use of the term "abnormal behaviour". The term, if it is to be used at all (I think it should not), should always be qualified as "statistically abnormal behaviour". Or better, "statistically uncommon behaviour". Otherwise the article is in danger of tipping to the other extreme, implying the sexually "moral" censoriousness which has caused so much unjustifiable distress to so many people. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I'm not going to delve very far into this topic, but in passing, I will note that I see some consensus here, perhaps more than the editors involved realize. DrChrissy is right that statistics and the most reliable sources need to be used. Flyer22 is right to point out that we need to not avoid or downplay legitimate topics and that there are articles that cover the details in depth that should be linked. Epipelagic summarizes it well; there is a need for appropriate balance and to avoid use of potentially perjorative adjectives like "abnormal." It is true that we are not as certain of what "normal" behavior is as we might like (it is, for example, pretty common, for dogs to hump on inappropriate objects, to the point the behavior cannot be called "rare"). So we do need to acknowledge that some sources may have inadvertently inserted their own human emotion into some studies of behavior. Stick with statistics and good sources, cross-link to other appropriate articles freely and visibly, being sure that if material is cut here solely due to UNDUE weight issues, that it be placed into other appropriate articles. I'm willing to lurk here and comment as a more or less neutral party on the issue if asked, but at any rate, good luck all. Montanabw^(talk) 05:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Any input on these changes? It seems misleading to frame a source that says "Homosexuality is quite common in the animal kingdom" and "No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all" with original material that implies it's very rare (0.004%). Without a reliable source connecting these two statistics, it's WP:SYNTH. KateWishing (talk) 13:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The reliable source is called a calculator! Why would there need to be a reliable source connecting two statistics to avoid WP:SYNTH? Wikipedia is absloutely full of sentences such as "researcher Jones stated there were XX, however, researcher Smith stated there were zz". There may not be any connecting source, but there is no WP:SYNTH, rather, this is presenting a balanced statement. The sentence that 1,500 species have been reported as performing homosexual behaviour is linked to a single source(the quality of which is under question by another editor) which states this number makes it "common". Leaving this without a balanced redress, or trying to remove the material is itself WP:SYNTH. Furthermore, just because one individual of a species has been reported as homosexual does not mean the entire species is homosexual. Just for the record, I am not against the reporting of homosexual behaviour in this article. I am a professional ethologist who has worked with animals for almost 30 years. I have seen several instances of homosexual behaviour, so not to report it would be against my own observations. All I am trying to do is give the reader a balanced account of the incidence of the behaviour.

The sentence in the article "No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all" is clearly undefendable and should be deleted or at least challenged. For this to mean anything, there would have to have been behavioural studies on all the 1,305,250 animal species that exist. I have my doubts this has happened.__DrChrissy (talk) 15:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Follow up. The same source states in the preceding sentence "Indeed, there is a number of animals in which homosexual behaviour has never been observed, such as many insects, passerine birds and small mammals." This is a direct contradiction! The reliability of this source really should be discussed.__DrChrissy (talk) 15:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that the 0.004% statistic does not, in fact, offer any indication of the prevalence of homosexual behavior, because the sexual behavior of most species has not been studied at all. It would be just as meaningful to say that heterosexual behavior has only been recorded in 0.008% of animals. I'm fine with the article saying that homosexual behavior is rare, so long as that's the actual conclusion of a reliable source and not your own synthesis of two unrelated statistics. (By the way, 1,305,250 is the estimate of invertebrate species; including vertebrates, the total is 1,367,555.) KateWishing (talk) 16:04, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I take your point. I have made edits which I hope represent this. Thanks for the heads up about the vertebrate/invertebrate numbers.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:12, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

@Epipelagic. Thanks for reminding me that I tend to be overly scientific/statistical in my use of "abnormal". I think your suggestion of "statistically uncommon behaviour" is a very good one.__DrChrissy (talk) 15:16, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

• When the RS is a calculator, the raw number is not WP:SYNTH, but a statement of rare/common or abnormal/normal is WP:SYNTH absent a RS explaining that it is and why. Here, I'd be most comfortable just plugging the number and letting the reader decide the significance of the evidence for themselves. To some, that it exists at all is "proof of normal" while for others, the low prevalence is "proof" the opposite direction. I think NPOV says we just teach the controversy and let the reader derive their own conclusions. Montanabw^(talk) 23:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

The reference to the total known number of species (with specious 7 figure accuracy!) statistically illustrates nothing and should be removed. Homosexual behaviour is mainly studied in vertebrates, about 60,000 species (over half of them fish), and even more particularly in mammals, about 5,400 species. And even those figures mean little unless we know how many of the species have been specifically studied for such behaviour. As to whether the interview with Petter Bøckman is a reliable source, I have pinged him since he edits Wikipedia and might like to contribute to this discussion himself. Peter has made many useful contributions to articles related to evolution both here and on the Norwegian Wikipedia. He was an organiser of Against Nature?, the exhibition on homosexuality in animals held at the Norwegian Natural History Museum. --Epipelagic (talk) 09:40, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

@ Epipelagic: Thanks very much for your input on this and for contactingg Petter Bockman. It is worth us all remembering that this figure of 1,500 is not a quote, and is therefore perhaps not directly attributable to Bockman. It also strikes me that "1,500" is an unusually "round" number and therefore as specious as the 7 figure accuracy of the total number of species. I think we are caught up in the WP problem of verifiability before truth!__DrChrissy (talk) 15:12, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to be late to the party (and thanks for the invite).

Just to clear up some sources: The number 1500 is from Bruce Bagemihl's "Biological exuberance", 1999. He lists a number of studies where animals are engaged in sexual or sexuality-related behaviour towards same sex conspecifics (and sometimes across species, like in the Brown-headed cowbird), and simply summarized the number of species. Since the species identity is uncertain in some cases and what constitutes a species or not is sometimes in doubt, Bagemihl gave a round number. He should be the source for the number, not me.

The quote from me (from an interview in connection with the Against Nature? exhibition) must be seen against the notion discussed in the article that homosexual behaviour is somehow an extraordinary phenomenon. We know very little about the behaviour of many animals, sexual or otherwise. The majority of known speices are small insects, for many we don't even know what eat, let alone how they conduct their social business. The quote is to warn against assuming all sexual behaviour naturally conforms to our social narratives.

The quote is mangled above. Here's the full quote:

"To turn the approach on its head: No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all, such as sea urchins and aphis (aphids are meant as facultatively asexual reproducers). Moreover, a part of the animal kingdom is hermaphroditic, truly bisexual. For them, homosexuality is not an issue."

The term "abnormal" is not relevant in connection with this topic. Homosexual behaviour is a quite normal part of the social life of e.g. bonobos. Human standards can't be used in descriptions of normality in other species. Petter Bøckman (talk) 17:04, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Petter, Thanks for joining us with your valuable input. I am the editor who started this discussion and used the word "abnormal" . Please do not worry, I have been shown the error of my overly statistical ways, and I don't think there is an issue with avoiding use of "abnormal". The concerns here (or at least my concerns) are that this is such an important subject in zoology, yet the article gives undue weight (in my opinion) to behaviours that occur with relatively less frequency. We have entire sub-sections that are based on just one or two examples (case-studies) and several citations of these lead to dead-links or sources of which the reliability is questioned. This is downgrading the overall quality of the article. Thankyou for providing the source of the 1,500 figure. I have found the information for the citation, but I feel uneasy about editing this into the article without having acually seen the source myself. Would it be possible for you to do this, please.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:35, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I can't find the 1,500 figure in Biological Exuberance. It says (p. 673): "Same-sex courtship, sexual, pair-bonding, and /or parenting behaviors have been documented in the scientific literature in at least 167 species of mammals, 132 birds, 32 reptiles and amphibians 15 fishes, and 125 insects and other invertebrates, for a total of 471 species (see part 2 and appendix for a complete list). These figures do not include domesticated animals (at least another 19 species; see the appendix), nor species in which only sexually immature animals/juveniles engage in homosexual activities (for a survey of the latter in mammals, see Dagg 1984). For a number of reasons, this tally is likely to be an underestimate (especially for species other than mammals and birds, which are not as thoroughly covered): see chapter 3 for further discussion." Chapter 3 doesn't mention 1,500 either. KateWishing (talk) 21:22, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much for doing this research. We should note that these numbers include animals showing same-sex pair bonding and/or parenting behaviour - these are not sexual behaviours. Same-sex "courtship" could also be easily confused with social facilitation and inter-male competition for females (e.g. at a lek, males may display to each other in the absence of a female.)__DrChrissy (talk) 16:36, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree the article per now has some problems. First off, is the term "sexual" referring to the sexes of the animals (i.e is this about gender specific behaviour) or does it refer to reproduction (i.e. reproductive behaviour) or both? Lots of this stuff is covered in other articles and should just be summarized here (the unfortunately named Animal co-opted sexual behavior seems to cater for much of it). Sexual behaviour hermaphroditic animals is lacking, the same is the reproductive behaviour of sessile animals and sexual behaviour as species barriers. Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:41, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Petter Bøckman, when you stated "is the term 'sexual' referring to the sexes of the animals (i.e is this about gender specific behaviour) or does it refer to reproduction (i.e. reproductive behaviour) or both?", are you referring to the title of the article as well? I think that the title is fine. Do you mean that the term sexual should be clarified in the article when the context is not clear? What I gather from the article and its sources is that the term sexual is usually referring to reproductive and/or non-reproductive behavior. As for the Animal co-opted sexual behavior article, KateWishing changed its title...per above. Flyer22 (talk) 21:35, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hm, I was sure it was there, it's not a number of my own devising. Thank you for looking it up KateWishing. I'll see if I can track down the exact source when I get back to work.

Flyer22, the reason I asked about what meaning of "sexual" is meant here, is that there's a lot of gender specific behaviour in animals not necessarily connected to reproductive behaviour, and there's a lot of copulatory behaviour that is not gender specific. The term "sex" in English is a particularly imprecise term, covering bot copulation, physical gender and a host of copulation-related factors. In my own laguage, the title of this article, if translated directly, would only cover copulatory behaviour. Petter Bøckman (talk) 10:10, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Petter's comment above, which is why I have been adding images of courtship behaviour, but doesn't a "copulation" focussed definition mean that masturbation, oral sex and other behaviours would not be covered here?__DrChrissy (talk) 16:26, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Petter Bøckman, I know about the different definitions of sex; I've studied these topics significantly and often edit sex topics on Wikipedia. But, like I stated above, "What I gather from the article and its sources is that the term sexual is usually referring to reproductive and/or non-reproductive behavior." I did not see what you were confused about. Of course, this article should clarify when sexual does not mean reproductive and/or non-reproductive behavior, but, in general, that's what it means in this article. It's not usually referring to the sex (as in gender) of the animal. The term sex refers to the sex/gender of humans and non-human animals far more than than the term sexual does. So we should definitely be clear when the term sex is used in this article, if the context is not already clear. When stating something like "The lions engaged in sex.", however, the context is clear...unless the context is also supposed to be clear on the reproductive aspect. In the case of being clear on the reproductive aspect, I would state "The lions copulated.," "The lions mated.", or "The lions engaged in copulatory sex.", or be clearer in some other way if that's not deemed clear enough.

DrChrissy, yes, as shown by this and this dictionary source, copulation most commonly means "sexual union; the transfer of the sperm from male to female; usually applied to the mating process in nonhuman animals," "Conjugation between two cells that do not fuse but separate after mutual fertilization," and "To engage in sexual intercourse in which the penis is inserted into the vagina." But as shown by this dictionary source and this Animal Behavior Desk Reference: A Dictionary of Animal Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution source from Taylor & Francis, pages 122–124, it may also mean sexual activity in general, including homosexual sexual activity. I don't see why the Animal sexual behaviour article should be restricted to reproductive behavior. It should be an umbrella article for all non-human animal sexual behavior, with wikilinks pointing to the main Wikipedia articles for certain topics if there are articles for those certain topics.

On a side note: There is no need to ping me to this talk page via WP:Echo since it's on my WP:Watchlist. Flyer22 (talk) 18:34, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

delete "Genetics and sex" section

The "Genetics and sex" section is poorly written, it is based on a single source, and this source was published in 1947. If this phenomenon is widely accepted in biology, we need better sources. Otherwise, I propose to delete the section.__DrChrissy (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:23, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Delete "Specific species" section

This article is a general article about animal sexual behaviour. To me, it seems highly adventurous to take this down to the species level within this article - this information should be on the species own page. I propose this section is replaced with a more general section including subsections on mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish, and major taxa of the invertebrates.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:18, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree this section could be profitably replaced with a more general section focused on the evolutionary consequences of various sexual behaviours, rather than the current lists of random trivia such as "Mating among clouded leopards usually occurs during December and March." --Epipelagic (talk) 23:50, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm with Epipelagic. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:23, 11 February 2015 (UTC)