Sinergy
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ORIGINAL: MadameDahlia
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ORIGINAL: aSlavesLife
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ORIGINAL: dcnovice
Don't some primates seem to do so as well?
The thread the OP gave discusses bonobo homosexuality. I have read other articles on this as well, some more credible than others. One less believable article claims that bonobos engage in sex for pleasure as frequently as once every 2 hours. While I would tend to doubt that estimate, most credible papers written on bonobo sexuality does show that they engage in sex for reasons that are obviously not reproductive such as oral sex beteen females, and that they do it more frequently than do humans.
In my Physical Anthropology class we discussed this group of primates [bonobos (Pan Paniscus)] quite a bit.
They are very sexually active. They live in communities of about 50 animals, but they spend most of their time in smaller groups of 2-10 individuals. Compared to chimpanzees, the bonobos are more social and peaceful.
Their sexual behavior shows some features that are not found in other apes. For example, they mate face to face (ventroventral) about a quarter of the time. The position is rare among most mammals and not found among chimpanzees. It's pimarily found among whales, porpoises and humans.
Female bonobos exhibit a prolonged period of sexual receptivity, copulation occuring even in the early phases of the estrus cycle.
In chimpanzee groups the males will initiate sexual behaviors. In bonobo society both males and females initiate sexual contact in an egalitarian manner. Those who have observed their habits have noticed homosexual behaviors, though it seems to be primarily among the females in the group. Quite often the homosexual interactions between two females will occur before or after one or both of the females have engaged in heterosexual copulation.
In class we also learned that, contrary to rather popular belief, the bonobo is our closest genetic relative - not the chimpanzee.
They seem to have a lot in common with a number of people involved in "alternative lifestyles" as well. They're not monogamous. They're all over the place in terms of sexual orientation. And sex seems to be an enormous part of their world:
"Sexual intercourse plays a major role in Bonobo society, being used as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation, and as favors traded by the females in exchange for food. Bonobos are the only non-human apes to have been observed engaging in all of the following sexual activities: face-to-face genital sex (most frequently female-female, then male-female and male-male), tongue kissing, and oral sex."
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
What a wild bunch... I bet they throw some awesome parties.
I just finished reading Jared Diamond's "Why Is Sex Fun?"
He went into great depth about the sexual behavior differences between primates, humans, and other animals.
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RE: animal homosexuality - 
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Much to the amazement of people at a local dungeon. (Must not be sidetracked by amusing anecdote.) 
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