The trend wasn’t statistically significant, but it was enough to confirm that same-sex behavior didn’t have a reproductive cost - something that Savolainen said he was surprised to find. After examining the offspring count for all 236 males, the researchers found that the more times a monkey paired up with a fellow male, the higher his offspring count tended to be. Indeed, engaging in same-sex mounting did not negatively affect a macaque’s overall reproductive success. That could be a sign that in some cases, the couplings “could partially function as ‘practice’ for future reproductive activity,” they wrote. The younger a macaque, the more likely he was to engage in same-sex encounters, the study authors found. Science & Medicine Study Links Male Gays, Birth of Older BrothersĪ mother’s antibodies may change with each boy, raising chances the next will be homosexual.
