Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The effeminate sheep & other problems with Darwinian sexual selection

The title of this post is actually the subtitle of a fascinating article by Jonah Lehrer, in Seed magazine. It was published about a year ago, so you might have heard something about it.

The article summarizes the theories of Joan Roughgarden, a biology professor at Stanford who wrote a book about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Her theories are thought out well enough to have merited publication in peer-reviewed journals, although, unsurprisingly, they're controversial, even among other biologists. But she does present a case that seems to answer the question: If Darwin had it right, and you believe being gay is genetic (both views I buy), why didn't this trait get wiped out by thousands of generations of natural selection?

It's an interesting read.

And you know this guy has already read it. Many, many times.

Rick Santorum

(photo credit)

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