Can fish be gay
Male Fish Uses Bisexuality to Lure Females
Female Mexican molly fish tend to travel for big, colorful males, so what's a scrawny, drab guy to do? Scientists say he can flaunt bisexual behavior to bag a mate.
Among Mexican mollies (Poecilia mexicana), females are quite promiscuous but choosy, favoring flashy, large-bodied males that aggressively defend them and push smaller, duller males to the outskirts of the shoal. These less attractive and subordinate males hardly receive a chance to oppose , but they might be able to catch a female's eye if they engage in homosexual action, the research suggests.
For their experiments, scientists at the University of Frankfurt in Germany presented lab-raised female mollies with animations of virtual males, including scenes of less attractive males engaging in heterosexual and homosexual "genital nipping."
You may likeThis fish version of foreplay is the most frequently observed sexual behavior for the species. Males regularly nip at the female genital opening before mating, but they are also sometimes observed nipping at other males' copulatory organs before trying to mate with them.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the females were more a
New Study Suggests That Female Fish Find Turned On By Gay Males
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Gay habit among male fish may increase their chances of scoring a female, according to new analyze from researchers at the University of Frankfurt.
It could help describe why homosexual behaviors are found in almost every species alive, even though they don't outcome in offspring.
Many characteristics and behaviors of today all come from evolutionary advantages that helped that species' preceding ancestors survive, the researchers say. For example, the reason we love junk food today is because our ancestors needed steep calorie foods (like fatty and sugary candies and chips) to keep our bodies and brains running until their next meal, which was often hard to come by.
The evolution of gay
Gay beha
In an unusual mating strategy, hard-up males of a tiny, promiscuous fish species engage in queer acts in a bid to entice females to copulate with them, a study said Wednesday.
And it works.
Researchers said small, non-dominant Atlantic molly males, often overlooked for larger, flashier rivals as mating partners, rose vastly in the esteem of females that observed them copulating—regardless of the partner's sex.
Some female animals are established to show a preference for mating with males they had observed coupling with other females in a phenomenon known as "mate choice copying".
This allows them to appraise the quality of a potential mate from a distance.
For this study, the researchers set out to show that homosexual behaviour in the tropical freshwater fishPoecilia mexicana would similarly boost a drabber male's chances of heterosexual coupling.
"P. mexicana females grow their preference for initially non-preferred males not only after observing those males interacting sexually with females, but also when having observed them initiating lgbtq+ behaviour," the team wrote of their findings in the journal Royal Population Biology Letters.
Normally, females of th
A fifth of male fish in UK rivers now ‘trans-gender’ due to chemicals in human waste
Twenty per cent of male fish tested in English rivers are now ‘trans-gender’ or ‘intersex’, with both female and male characteristics, due to chemicals flushed from UK households.
Research by Professor Charles Tyler, a leading fish physiologist and eco-toxicologist from the University of Exeter, has shown male fresh-water fish are displaying ‘feminised’ traits, demonstrating ‘female’ behaviour and even producing eggs.
The chemicals causing these effects are flushed down the loo and include ingredients in the contraceptive pill, and by-products of cleaning agents, plastics, and cosmetics.
Professor Tyler will show his findings in the opening lecture of the 50th Anniversary Symposium of the Fisheries World in the British Isles, held in Exeter University 3-7 July 2017.
The week-long symposium will comprise papers from international experts on fish physiology and behaviour, and discuss the threats fish populations face from over fishing, climate change and human pollution.
Professor Tyler’s lecture the Feminisation of Nat