Alternatively, today’s musings could be titled “Of avenging orcas and lesbian gulls.”
Orcas: by now you have probably heard that parts of the Mediterranean are plagued by pods of orcas that have taken to disabling the rudders of sailboats, damaging the ships to the point where crews need to be evacuated and some boats having sunk. These are not isolated events – over 50 occurrences have been reported in just the last few months, involving a growing number of these mammals (it is believed there is only a total of about 60 orcas inhabiting that region.)
What on earth is going on in the Strait of Gibraltar? Some scientists believe that the killer whales are simply playful. A speaker for the organization OrcaIberica.org, for example, pointed out that the orcas don’t approach the boats with signs of aggression, nor display aggressive behavior during their attempts to break the rudders. They leave the people who evacuate into life boats in peace. The species is known to play and pursue fads in the process: there was a time when they all started to carry dead salmon on their heads for a while, and another one where they increasingly imitated the noises of sea lions.
Researchers at the University of St. Andrews, on the other hand, believe that a female who was hurt by a sailboat’s rudder in 2020, is modeling revenge, with more and more orcas now participating in the attacks where they bite, bend and break off the rudder, fighting off a perceived common enemy.
“Notions of collective self-defense in cetaceans (aquatic mammals including whales, dolphins and porpoises) are far from outlandish. We have accounts of sperm whales rising to each other’s defense when orcas attack, for example.”
It is assumed that the behavior spreads through social learning. What makes this so problematic, other than humans being thrown into the sea by a bunch of huge, toothed marine mammals, or destroying expensive boats, is the fact that this particular species is critically endangered. Political efforts to protect them will not be helped if people see them as actual “killer”whales, and if boat operators loose tourist income if they are simply asked to leave the marine habitat alone. Demands to cull the orcas are already emerging.
They are smart cookies. Captive orcas learn to regurgitate fish to use as bait for gulls, which they apparently prefer to eat over the fish, for example.
Which brings me to gulls – and the thought-provoking theme how science depends on societal approval, not just for funding, but even for research findings to see the light of day.
Gulls: I will summarize what you can hear on a fascinating RadioLab podcast in full. Lulu Miller, one of the hosts of RadioLab, wanted to showcase same-sex pairings in nature for Pride Month. She offers sea gulls, and many other species – and their sounds – as examples: “gay bonobo yelps usher in squeaking manatees; homosexual Amazon dolphins that love cuddling screech alongside male bottlenose dolphins who have sex (with each other) roughly 2.4 times per hour. Queer rattlesnakes and marsupials harmonize with homosexual bats who have sex upside-down while flying.” Many of these species are bisexual, but there are also small percentages of some species that are exclusively homosexual.
In the course of perusing the literature, she found how, across centuries, the scientific documentation of homosexuality in nature was suppressed. A 1999 compendium by Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, revealed to her how much evidence was omitted from the scientific publications. Suppression also almost happened to the sea gull study by George and Molly Hunt, that showed about 10% of birds nested in same sex (female) pairs, having large clutches of eggs that they cared for together. Finally published in Science in 1977, the Hunts were condemned because of the study’s implication that homosexuality was, in fact, natural. Congress intervened, temporarily blocking the National Science Foundation budget because it had partially funded the Hunts’ research.
The (religious) denial that queerness exists in nature happens even in the face of findings that homosexuality can have adaptive advantage. (Well, I guess any concept associated with evolution is suspect…) For black swans, for example, heterosexual pairings experience a 30 percent cygnet (baby swan) survival rate, while homosexual pairs fledge 80 percent. Male-male pairs tend to commandeer larger pond territories, leaving them with more and better space for rearing their clutch. (Ref.) Miller, the podcast host, suggests that
“It’s not just swans who experience a version of this bisexual advantage. In many species, sexual fluidity enhances “conflict resolution, stress relief, hunting alliances, social fitness, pleasure, and survival rate of offspring.”
Let’s imagine, though, just for sake of thinking it through, that these scientific observations were different. Let’s imagine, perhaps, that we found that homosexuality was only observed in our species, Homo sapiens. That would not for an instant shake my view that condemnations of human homosexuality are offensive and utterly indefensible. In other words, the value judgment here has (and should have) roots that are deeper, more resolute, than the scientific findings! The science is intriguing, and may deepen our understanding of many points, but on this issue (and many others) human values about differences, inherited or chosen, need to have their foundation in immutable principles, not in the scientists’ observations of similar differences in the animal kingdom.
In case all this depletes your mood on a perfectly fine Monday morning, do I have the antidote for you: this clip of a flying squirrel getting out of a pickle made me laugh out loud. Nature at its best. (Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder: is this AI generated? We’ll never know.)
Music helps us dream of the seaside.
