Animals 
of various species provide many examples of how gender, sex, and sexuality are far more complex than the rigid categorization we’ve pushed them into. Queerness is abundant throughout nature, so rhetoric that seeks to delegitimize the existence of queer, trans, and intersex people by deeming them “unnatural” or “aberrant” is flat-out wrong. Same-sex behavior has been recorded in over 1,500 species across the animal kingdom! Human beings are part of the animal kingdom! We’re mammals! We are as much a part of nature as a forest of redwoods or a pride of lions.
Humans are late to the party, because animals have clearly understood sexuality as a spectrum for a while now. During the 2003 landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, the American Psychological Association cited the prevalence of homosexuality among animals, which bolstered the case to decriminalize homosexuality. Fortunately for them, non-human animals do not have to navigate a complex legislative landscape or fight for legal recognition of their partnerships; they can just do as they please.
Bonobos, one of our close relatives in the primate world, are known to engage in sexual activity in same-sex pairings as well as different-sex pairings. But these are not exclusive pairings; female bonobos engaging in same-sex behavior today might seek out a male partner the next day and vice versa. Regardless of who they’re partnered up with at the time, bonobos serve as a great reminder that bisexuality is not a phase!
Roy and Silo, the pair of male chinstrap penguins housed at the Central Park Zoo, brought the topic of gay animals to the mainstream. Zookeepers noticed Roy and Silo practicing mating rituals with each other and treating a rock like an egg to be hatched. The zookeepers decided to give them an actual egg to see what they would do, and the pair captured the hearts of millions by raising Tango the chick together.
People could not get enough of the gay penguins raising a baby; Tango and her dads even became the subject of a children’s book called And Tango Makes Three. But wait, there’s even more! Once she matured, Tango was seen with another female penguin, engaging in similar behaviors as her dads before her. A lesbian icon! Clearly, it’s time for a queer remake of Happy Feet.
Jonathan the giant tortoise is a fan-favorite around the world and has multiple claims to fame. He is, most notably, the oldest tortoise in the world with 191 years of life experience under his shell. He is estimated to have hatched in 1832, making him about 50 years older than the University of Texas (founded in 1883). While his impressive life span is what first brought him fame, his long-term companionship with another tortoise has made him even more noteworthy.
This other tortoise, Frederica, was brought in as a female mate for Jonathan, and the pair hit it off and became inseparable. Nearly 3 decades after this tortoise romance began, the animals’ keepers discovered that Frederica was not a female tortoise, but actually a male one! Renamed Frederic after the 2017 discovery, he and Jonathan have continued living their gay tortoise lives. Truly the queer elders we didn’t know we needed!
Genders beyond and outside of the binary system have been recognized in various cultures around the world from as early as the 23rd century BCE. People we would now refer to as nonbinary, transgender, or intersex have a rich history of existence, despite the current socio-political culture aimed at silence and erasure. But the animal kingdom continues to illustrate that sex and gender cannot be sorted neatly into a binary; trying to force a binary narrative is ahistorical and at odds with nature itself.
A half male, half female cardinal was spotted in 2019 sporting both bright red and muted brown feathers. This coloring of the feathers is split almost exactly down the middle of the bird, with the signature red, male plumage on the bird’s right side and the brown, female plumage on the left side. Based on human categorizations of sex and gender, this is definitely an intersex cardinal and could also be considered bi-gender!
If you want to identify the sex of a lion, see if it has a mane; if it does, it’s male and if it doesn’t it’s female, right? Nope! If you had used that strategy looking at these 5 lions, you would have identified them all as male and you would have been wrong. These wild, female lions all grew manes out of the blue. And, in addition to the new hairdos, they began exhibiting behaviors typically characteristic of male lions. They were seen frequently roaring, scent-marking, and ripping the gender binary to shreds.
The ocean offers a wealth of variation when it comes to sex and gender roles. The social groups of certain fish, among other creatures, necessitate transitioning—and they don’t even have to update any government or identity documents!
Gender roles and expectations are very different underwater, especially for seahorses. For male seahorses, fatherhood is marked by pregnancy and birth. The male carries the up to 2000 developing seahorse babies in a pouch on his stomach, and when the gestation period is over, muscle contractions incite the birth, forcing the seahorse to expel the babies from the pouch.
Clownfish social groups and families are led by a dominant female with a male sidekick and often a handful of juveniles. If the female clownfish dies, the male sidekick changes sex and assumes the dominant female position in the group. One of the juveniles matures and assumes the role of male sidekick and the pair becomes a mating pair.
Cleaner Wrasse fish, on the other hand, have a strict hierarchy within their social groups with one large, dominant male surrounded by several smaller females. If the male cleaner disappears from the group, the largest female will change sex and assume the dominant male role in the group.
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