A nice boy like ewe

[MotherBear]

Fancy meeting a nice boy like ewe
Saturday January 06, 2007
By Martha McKenzie-Minifie  



Sexual preference is a topic that raises eyebrows in the blokey world of farming, especially when it comes to sheep.But United States research has found 8 per cent of rams are gay, and while New Zealand farmers are a bit sheepish about it, they admit rams do more than just eye each other up.

The Oregon State University study sparked outrage overseas when researchers altered hormone levels of the test sheep's brains to try to make them straight. And it worked, sparking protests from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. High-profile gay tennis star Martina Navratilova called for the study to be suspended, seeing it as a Mengele moment.

In a nation where the animal is a national symbol, farmers need only look to the paddock for evidence. Male sheep and, more commonly, male cattle form same-sex partnerships.And the phenomenon is not isolated to farm animals: Auckland Zoo has a pairing of male flamingos while at Kelly Tarlton's the male penguins like each other.

Sheep Breeders Association vice-chairman Derek Clarkson said young rams were the most homosexually active sheep."Probably, most of them could be put down as bisexual rather than gay," said Mr Clarkson. "When they are young, 8 months old or something, they're extremely active among themselves but they seem to get over that when they get older."

AgResearch scientist David Scobie has seen homosexual behaviour when rams are isolated from ewes."In the right season, they'll fancy anything," said Dr Scobie.He said it was difficult for farmers to know which rams mated with ewes because a group of rams was put out with a large number of ewes.

Waikato sheep farmer Steven Stark did not pay attention to individual rams, but said he had a gay bull when he was a dairy farmer. "I used to have a bull that would always jump out of the herd, not in."

AgResearch reproductive technologies section manager Vish Vishwanath said male-on-male sexual demonstrations were a display of dominance in bulls, helping to determine a pecking order.

But getting back to this country's most numerous animal, the Oregon study found that the brains of gay sheep invariably had a smaller hypothalamus than their straight male siblings.

This is the first hard scientific evidence of biological differences between gay and straight mammals - and the researchers found these brain differences were already in place in the third trimester of pregnancy. Sheep, at least, are born gay or straight.