Are giraffes gay
February is LGBTQ+ History Month and to celebrate the Museum of Zoology is sharing the story of giraffes and the work of scientist Anne Innis Dagg. Read on for our tutorial on how to create your possess rainbow giraffe fabric, perfect for your next sewing project!
When we see feral animals behaving in a particular way, one of the first things we ask is ‘why?’. Our own experiences, as humans, will often shape the explanations we arrive up with. Experiment these examples together:
Here’s a bonobo exhibiting its teeth. Why do you reflect it is doing this?
Bonobos and chimpanzees will communicate by showing their teeth and ‘grinning’. However, this is often to reduce nervous tension, rather than show happiness or humour.
Slow lorises see cute and include been shown holding their arms up when ‘tickled’.
In evidence, this behaviour is warning sign. They have glands underneath their armpits that ooze a type of toxic oil. They hold their arms up to lick those glands, to combine the oil with other toxins in their saliva. This makes for a mean, venomous bite.
It is easy to build a guess at what an animal is doing, especially when the animal’s b
Here's why everyone on the internet is talking about gay giraffes
If you've gone anywhere near the internet over the past rare days, you may have heard literally everyone talking about whether or not giraffes are same-sex attracted, which is not something we thought we'd be discussing over our granola.
Bizarrely, the conversation actually arose from a UK MP and has reportedly divided the Labour Party. But as strange as it may seem, the debate is actually rooted in some pretty important points about LGBTQ+ education in schools. Wondering how it all came about? Us too. Here's how...
MP Dawn Butler, Labour's Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary, defended LGBTQ+ sex education in schools, using the example of giraffes.
Speaking at the PinkNews Awards, Butler was responding to recent protests outside schools which teach LBGTQ+ sex education or support Pride, by parents who believe their children can be "taught to be gay".
Butler said, "They talk about teaching people or children to be gay. They don’t long people to be taught to be gay. I want to know this, right: if you can teach ‘gayness’ – if that’s even a word – if you can teach gayness, who speaks giraffe?”
"Becau
Giraffes are a lot gayer than most people offer them credit for
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FACT: Natural history is super queer—just look at jousting giraffes
By Owen Ever
Whether described as “ritualistic jousting” or a “stately dance,” there’s something erotic going on between male giraffes. According to the field observations of Canadian biologist Anne Innis Dagg, “Necking emotionally attached one male gently rubbing his head or neck against the body of another, or the In 2019, UK member of parliament Dawn Butler made headlines when she claimed that “ 90% of giraffes are male lover ”. Butler had been arguing in support of LGBT rights and pushing back on the notion that people are “ taught to be same-sex attracted ”, but once taken out of context by the press, the remark sparked debate not about human rights, but about giraffe sexuality. It turns out, Butler’s claim isn’t quite real. For one, almost all of the documented same-sex habit among giraffes occurs between males, so that “90%” figure is misleading (more on this later). More glaring is that it overlooks the fact that, as the UK’s Natural History Museum notes, “most giraffes will mate with the opposite sex if given the chance”. In other words, most male giraffes aren’t “gay” — they’re bi. Much of what we know about giraffes we owe to Anne Innis Dagg , one of the first biologists to study giraffe behavior in the wild. Called “the Jane Goodall of giraffes” despite having conducted her groundbreaking research years before Goodall’s, her 1958 paper, “ The Behavior of the Giraffe ”, gave us the first detailed look into the fascinating lives of these long-necked Giraffes Take Bisexuality to New Heights