Insects also 'love' gay

The sex life of insects has long been judged to be relatively simple with sexy dance, hooked abdomen and a flashy "love" on the forest floor. However, a new study for gay "relations" shows that such activities are not only meaningful in terms of mating.

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For an overview of the evolutionary explanations of homosexual mating in the invertebrate world, a group of biologists from Tel Aviv University (Israel) and the Federal Institute of Technology Switzerland (Zurich, Switzerland) reviewed nearly 100 existing studies on the topic. The results of the first comprehensive study of this type have just been published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

The team focused on interactions between males to simplify analysis and detection, most of the gay "love" happens randomly. Although larger animals have developed more complex homosexual engines, such as maintaining an alliance (in some primates and seagulls), insects seem to be invisible. love was drawn into homosexual activities when hastily won the right to "be loved".

"They have to take every opportunity to mate, because if they are delayed, they may lose the opportunity to" love " , " said evolutionary ecologist Inon Scharf, a research team member.

In insects, males often "love" gay randomly and often only detect "confusion" after "acting".(Photo: Shutterstock)

According to Scharf, in some cases the males also carry the scent of the females that " sexually " , creating a signal that confuses males who are hunting for other mates. In some cases, males and females appear so similar that the male cannot distinguish whether the potential partner is a female until it waxes near "her" and prepare "to act".

Occasionally, the mistake to the extreme caused the insects to " do it" with inanimate objects, as observed in cockroaches trying to mate with glass bottles. In this case, according to Mr. Scharf, glass bottles "look like a giant female to them."

However, other studies have uncovered evidence of more sinister and intentional motives behind homosexual activity in insects. For example, male butterflies, caterpillars and wasps use homosexual "love" behavior to distract the enemy from potential partners. Some beetles have even been found to use homosexual mating as a way to release their sperm into another male's body, in case its "sperm" can be fertilized. If the "host" has the next "love" with a female, although this mechanism is not as effective.

Because male insect bodies are not designed to accept the sexual organs of another male, abnormal mating can harm the body. However, this is not a barrier for all insects, because one study even found that males in certain insects developed sexual organs like that of females in order to reduce the risk of harm from homosexual "love".

In contrast, homosexual activity among females seems to serve a variety of purposes and deserves to be analyzed separately, Scharf said. In general, females are more likely to engage in a "love" of homosexuals than males. In fact, according to one study, children in some beetles have climbed up on other females to look larger and attract more male partners.

The scientific world is still unclear about the frequency of homosexual mating in insects, because the number of cases observed in the laboratory is more than in nature. Certain Mr. Scharf, this may imply, such unusual "love" behavior occurs under stressful and isolated conditions. However, scientists still need to conduct further research to validate this view.

The team is now expected to conduct further tests in a beetle to determine how homosexual behavior affects different aspects of life and whether That is related to any other specific behavior.