Does the prevalence of same-sex encounters in a group of Puerto Rican monkeys enhance their ability to pass along their genes?
In 1993 reports that researchers had found a “gay gene” generated a jaw-dropping headline from the U.K.-based tabloid Daily Mail: “Abortion Hope after ‘Gay Genes’ Findings.” The article raised the inflammatory idea of giving a prospective parent the option of abortion if they were afraid that a child might one day seek a partner of the same sex.
The latest results pose a challenge to the paradox by suggesting that social benefits accrue from same-sex encounters, including improved evolutionary fitness for animals that engage in it. The monkeys that do so on Cayo Santiago tend to form more well-developed social ties with other males with whom they have sex and also experience greater reproductive success.
Cayo Santiago’s current generation of macaques, numbering around 1,700 animals, is descended from 409 monkeys that were brought from India in 1938 by a researcher who hoped to monitor their behaviors in a delimited space. Since then scientists have collected abundant multigenerational data about the monkeys, all of whom live in well-established social groups on the island.
A previously offered explanation for these same-sex behaviors in primates is that they are a way to establish or maintain a dominance hierarchy. But Savolainen and his colleagues found no link between social status and whether a male tended to be the mounter or the “mountee.” Their analysis flagged the behavior instead as a way to cement “wingman” status among males.
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