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Here's a quote that's being passed around:

Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is only found in one. Which one seems unnatural now?

With all the good intentions behind what's being said -- and as much as I'd really want to believe in it -- I still have to keep a skeptical mind about it.

Assuming that the quote was implying that we humans are the only ones to have homophobic individuals, a question comes to my mind: are humans really the only ones?

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    One of the sources in the top Google results: allthehorcrux.tumblr.com/post/4301024601/… and it has a link to a video youtube.com/watch?v=PooEhBxh0NY which supposedly proves the affirmation
    – Jader Dias
    Apr 14, 2011 at 18:05
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    This question is way too imprecise. Do you mean homophobia as a cultural meme? Then of course humans - as the only species that HAS cultural memes - would be the only ones who have that specific meme. Do you mean homophobia as in physiological "turn-off" at the sight of homosexual sex? I realize it exists in humans, but seriously doubt about its prevalence given Kinsey results (e.g. my unproven theory is that 99%+ of homophobic response is cultural vs. physiological).
    – user5341
    Apr 14, 2011 at 18:05
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    @user5341: no, humans are arguably not the only species that have cultural memes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture
    – Saibot
    Sep 7, 2015 at 8:13
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    This also falls into the "assigning human qualities to non-humans" category. This might be trying to prove a negative.
    – Ruut
    Oct 8, 2015 at 4:41
  • @user5341 How did you come up with the idea that there is physiological homophobia?
    – JP de la Torre
    Jan 14, 2016 at 16:31

1 Answer 1

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No.

Quoting from Homosexual Behaviour in Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective

[page 28] When male Japanese macaques do exhibit an interest in homosexual consortships, female partners will sometimes threaten or attack them and attempt to drive the males away.

Pages 147-148 also state that in bison "mildly negative" reactions to female-female sexual behavior was observed such as displacing one of the females during the act and "mild head threats and loud vocal threats".

Page 357-358 (table 14.1) lists numerous examples of attacks on homosexual pairs or groups. For example:

In Canadian Geese

Ganders disrupt female-female pairs by chasing off one and copulating with the other.

In Mountain Gorillas

Males aggressively separate females engaged in homosexual mounting.

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    Looks like sound evidence, but could these be explained as normal competitive mating behaviour? For example, is a male gorilla aggressively separating a female-female pairing different to how male gorillas respond to a non-dominant male mating with a female?
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Jan 28, 2016 at 19:50
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    @user568458 In some of the many examples it seems like competitive mating behavior, because it says that heterosexual mating is attempted after disrupting homosexual activity, but many of the examples just say that the homosexual activity is disrupted, without any mention of attempted heterosexual mating thereafter.
    – DavePhD
    Jan 28, 2016 at 20:06
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    I'm no expert but I think it's quite common for many species of mammals to aggressively disrupt males who are mating "out of their league", even if they don't then try to mate themselves - simply to enforce the hierarchy. It'd be interesting to see if these reactions to female-female mating were the same or different to how the same animal would react to a too-low-status male attempting the same thing
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Jan 28, 2016 at 20:33
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    @user568458 The abstract of the de Vos and Dowsett article which the book references in table 14.1 for saying that in wild Lechwe and Puku "Males attempt to separate female sexual partners by herding one of the females away from the other", says in the abstract "Single males, accompanying groups of females, don't ... display aggressively to intruding males.", but I don't have full text access scopus.com/record/…
    – DavePhD
    Jan 29, 2016 at 15:24

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