ID: Progress pride flag where the stripes of the triangle on the left and the vertical stripes are made up of nature photos in the relevant colors. Image from World Wildlife Foundation (full attribution here)
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Happy Pride from the Ocean!
The animal kingdom is remarkably fluid when it comes to sex. Lots of species on land, in the sky, and in the water are very happy spending the majority of their lives with same-sex partners, playing with both sexes, changing their gender, and/or are intersex. There are cetacean representatives for many of these traits, and where there aren’t, other marine species are here to help.
A word about language for this topic… Scientists who study sexual behaviors in animals talk about sexual behavior for activities that will most likely lead to reproduction and new floppy baby whales in 10 - 16 months time. When individuals known to be either under, or past, the age of ‘sexual maturity,’ and / or same-sex individuals of either sex are seen participating in the same actions, it is classified as nonreproductive copulatory behavior” or “indiscriminate sexual behaviors”. We understand these behaviors to represent ways the group reenforces social bonds and/or structures, teaches younger whales how to engage in actions that will allow them to procreate, play, and give themselves and others pleasure. Those are all formal words carefully chosen to not presume human meaning to animal actions when sex is involved. They are also words I am going to be using, for the most part, because it’s important not to project human ideas onto other beings. Do the individuals engaging in “indiscriminate sexual behaviors” think of themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual? Unlikely. Do they demonstrate behaviors that all gay, lesbian and bisexual folx will recognize. Yes. Is that the same as gay sex? No idea. One day, when our whale-human translators are up and working (don’t laugh, it’s already in process) we will be able to ask them what they’re doing and how they feel about it. We might even be able to understand their perspective on the topic. And in studying marine life we are finding repeated scientific evidence that queer, fluid behaviors are completely natural.
The L, G, and B of whales
ID: three photos of dolphins swimming at the surface. From L to R: 1: two pacific white-sided dolphins with grey dorsal fins and upper back with with on their sides. 2: two Orca with black dorsal fins and bodies. Gray ‘saddle patches’ are visible on each as is the white eye patch of one. 3: three Rissos with light gray bodies covered in scars, their dorsal fins are dark gray. Photos (c) C. Pennington 2024 - 2025
Dolphins
The vast majority of dolphins are extremely social beings. Most spend their lives in pods as small as three or four individuals to 30 or on rare occasions supper pods of 100 to 1000 dolphins. Pods are commonly split into two or three types, depending on the species. One consists of all adult females and their calves where the adults can share the work of caring for the kids. Aunties will watch over the babies when the moms need a break and all the adults can take turns hunting and feeding, knowing the kids are safe. There are pods made up of adult males, sometimes called ‘bachelor’ pods. These are males who have split off from the family groups to travel together, hunting and playing, and forming/maintaining tight, long lasting bonds. The third are juvenile pods of sub-adult males and females who are too old to hang with the moms and aunties but not quite ready for life as a full adult. Being with dolphins of their own age allows them time to practice skills with others of similar abilities. They hunt and play together, splitting off to join or form their own adult pods.
Dolphins are physically interactive with each other in all three types of pods. There is a lot of rubbing against / around / on each other, showing off of organs and observable sex-related play like rolling around each other, rubbing their bodies along one another, using parts of their bodies to stimulate each other, and extending penises. Adult female and males will meet up for short periods of time to mate, which doesn’t always result in baby dolphins, but there’s apparently a lot of sex, which means not all of it is for procreation, some of it’s probably just for fun.
After the meet ups, the individuals go their separate ways and back to their pods where sexual activity may continue.Within the bachelor pods sexual displays include a range of sexual and non-sexual interactions between males. Female dolphins are also seen interacting witheach other in ways that are physical and clearly pleasurable, both in the juvenile and nursery pods. While younger males, across groups, are said have a lot of same-sex sexual relations, “many times an hour”, in many positions, and with multiple friends. Dolphins are well known to form long lasting relationships with others of the same sex.
ID: three photos of baleen whales at the surface. From L to R: A humpback whale breaching, long arms swinging around its dark gray body and white underside. A gray whale resting, its body is dark gray with pale ‘freckle’ like spots. A blue whale blowing out air through its high rigid blowhole. Its body, where visible is blue-gray. Photos (c) C. Pennington 2021 - 2025
Baleen whales
The group of whales known as the baleen whales include the largest animal on earth, the blue whale, as well as the humpback, gray, right whale, and others. They are all on the reclusive side, traveling solo most of the time. Part of the year they will gather in cold waters at popular feeding areas to feast. Many humpbacks have been documented hanging out together year after year suggesting not just opportunistic feedings but possibly real friendships. After a good meal they will travel to warm, tropical waters to mate and breed.
Mating for most baleens means a group of males will race after a female. When she chooses one of the males, or gets tired of the chase, mating happens… underwater. When they dive, the whales disappear from view of the cameras and boats. In 2021 a National Geographic team, following a humpback whale heat run, lucked into filming a humpback whale birth. It was the first time the moment had ever been filmed. I suspect they were hoping to film a mating sequence, because we still haven’t seen that for most of the baleens.
Right whales, helpfully, mate at the surface of the water which allows researchers to observe and document the activities. And it turns out, right whales have a lot of sex, with multiple partners, starting as juveniles, and not always in the breeding grounds. They will also form same sex groups with similar surface active behaviors. As with dolphins, right whales will extend their penises, roll and rub against each other all in the same manner as the movements used for pro-creative sex.
Gray whale also do at least some of their mating near enough to the surface for us to get drone footage of their actions. Gray whale mating involves multiple individuals, usually several males and one female, rolling over and around each other, penises at the ready. There have also been observations of all-male groups doing the same behaviors with no females in sight.
‘Gay humpbacks’:
If you have put the words ‘gay humpbacks’ into a search engine recently you’re probably saying “but wait… we do have evidence of two male humpbacks engaged in sexual activity.” Yes we do. And it’s complicated.
In 2022 two male humpback whales were observed engaging in same-sex sexual behavior. It was an exceptional moment for science and the public, but there’s a wrinkle. The event had a noticeable power imbalance. One male was large, well fed, with smooth, healthy skin. The other male was clearly unwell. Based on signs on his body, it is likely he had been struck by a ship in the recent past. He was very thin, moving slowly, and covered in whale lice. All humpbacks, and most whales, have some whale lice on them throughout their lives but they acquire a lot more when hurt or ill. Like anyone not feeling well, whales will do what they can to conserve energy. They will travel slowly and stay near the surface to breathe, which happens to give the lice more time to cling and reproduce. The large whale was seen initiating sexual activities with the smaller whale as they swam slowly around the small boat that observed the encounter.
The sighting supports the data that same-sex sexual behavior is one way humpbacks engage with each other, but we need better examples to showcase same-sex interactions in humpbacks.
T in the oceans
ID: three images: 1: photo of two orange and white clownfish in a pale anemone. 2: Illustration of California Sheephead showing the life cycle from small pink/orange juvenile to mid-sized pink female to large male with squared black head, orange body and black tail. 3: photo two small, slender, orange/pink fish with bright purple stripes. Images by 1: Unknown / true-life blogspot 2: Illustration by Anoosh Moutafian 3: Clark Anderson/Aquaimages
As far as we know there are no whales who can change sex, but there are other animals who can, and do change when conditions are right. Most versions of this are forms of hermaphroditism where the individual is born with male and/or female organs. This can be Sequential: where they begin as male (Protandry) and change to female, or begin as female (Protogyny) and change to male, or (Bidirectional) where both female and male organs are present at birth and the individual can act as either at different times in their lives. The reasons for changing are generally environmental conditions like the amount of available food and the balance of males to females in an area. There are also simultaneous hermaphrodites who have both types of sexual organs from birth and can use either or both as needed. In some cases they can even self-fertilize. This is primarily seen in land based animals like the Banana slug.
Protandry: Clown fish
Clown fish are small, warm water fish found in the Red Sea and the Pacific Ocean, nesting in colonies within the stinging arms of anemone. And if they look familiar, yes, these are the fish in ‘Finding Nemo’. They can be found in many different colors from the now classic orange to black, brown, red, or yellow with white stripes and some with no stripes. All Clown fish are born male and live in a hierarchy based around a breeding pair, with the largest female being at the top. When a breeding female dies, a non-breeding male will change to female and the others all will level up in ranking.
Protogyny: California sheephead wrasse
The California sheepshead is a fish native to the Pacific coast from Monterey Bay down to the Gulf of Mexico. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has several in their Kelp Forest tank and they’re gorgeous. Sheepsheads are born female and can change to male when there’s an imbalance in the local population and more males are needed. Males are larger than the females, so a female who changes sex will grow considerably during the transition as well as develop the large forehead bump that sheepheads are famous for. They also change color shifting from silvery pink with a hint of white on their bellies, to the black tail and head with vibrant red-orange belly of a sexually mature male ready to defend his territory.
Bidirectional: Blue-banded goby
Bluebanded Gobios are small, colorful fish who live in and around rocky reefs in the Pacific Ocean. They can be found from Morro Bay, California down to the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. There are no obvious, physical differences between females and males. They usually live in groups with multiple females and one male. When needed, they can change back and forth between female and male forms.
I is for Intersex, whales
ID: three images of solitary whales from L to RL 1: a True’s beaked whale gliding underwater. Its body is gray and torpedo shaped with a narrow head and pointed beak, short pectoral fins and small flukes. 2: a Southern right whale at the surface, seen from above. Its body is black with white patches at its nose and upper back and light gray along its flukes. 3: a bowhead whale, its black body angled gracefully away from the surface. its nose and paddle-like fin are almost touching, the sandy bottom. Photos from: 1: by Roland Edler, 2: WWF VDOS Global / WWF-Canada, 3: Brian Skerry
Until recently we could only confirm the physical sex of a whale through visual observations of activities that showed genitalia or through post mortem. Intersex whales have been documented since at least 1963 through this method, when a deceased fin whale was identified as having both testes and a uterus. Technological advancements in the years since have allowed whale researchers to do genetic* testing in whale populations. One of the goals of such research has been to confirm and track the balance of female and male individuals which can show if populations are able to grow at sustainable rates. One of the side benefits has been the discovery of even more Intersex whales. To date, common dolphins, beluga, True’s beaked whales, bowhead whales, and Southern right whales have also been documented as being Intersex.
*Testing for this work, and more, is done with samples collected from living whales. Early forms of sample gathering included shooting arrows, with a collection catchment at the tip, launched toward a moving whale. Once contact was made the arrow either bounced off or was pulled off and the sample retrieved. The methods have gone from less invasive to the 2015 launch of non-invasive drones that fly over whales with Petri dishes and collect their snot when they exhale through their blow holes.
Spotlight: Joan Roughgarden
ID: An older white woman, facing the camera, smiling. Her gray hair is pulled back from her face. She wears circular, dangling earrings and a deep blue shirt. Photo: The Outwords Archive
Joan Roughgarden is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist known for challenging existing ideas about sex and gender. In 1998, at the age of 52, she came out as transgender.
While not specifically identified as a marine biologist, Roughgarden’s field work in the 1990s included a study of barnacle communities along the coastal edge of Monterey Bay and in a laboratory setting. She has a knack for refusing to overlook deviations in animal populations and generalizations about gender and cooperative interactions in species. Her seminal work Evolution’s Rainbow shows how underreporting of same-sex sexual behavior has supported our mainstream belief that same-sex sexuality is ‘aberrant’ and unnatural.
Her work challenges Darwins’s theory of sexual selection and theory that gender and sexuality fit in a binary world view, where individuals always choose a member of the opposite sex to mate with while competing with members of the same sex for access to partners. Roughgarden proposes an alternative theory of evolutionary selection which includes the diversity of gender and sexual experience seen across nature and is based on cooperation leading to social-selection instead of sexual.
And Glitter!: “Second Nature” documentary
ID: Illustrated poster of people in brightly colored clothing studying animals in the wild for “Second Nature, gender & Sexuality in the animal world” From: SecondNature
If you haven’t already heard, “Second Nature” is a new documentary exploring the more than 1500 animals who are queer in so many wonderful ways and it’s narrated by trans actor Eliot Page. They are doing limited run showings, most are currently in NYC but more dates and places will be coming, so check the schedule on their website.
ABC News Interview with Director Drew Denny and Narrator Eliot Page (includes some discussion of Page’s upcoming film “The Odyssey”)
Where to Find Kate…
This month started with a trip to Chicago for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association SFWA’s Nebula conference. And when in a city with an aquarium… you know I had to go visit Shedd Aquarium. I took a ton of photos and notes, so the trip report for that should be up soon and posted over at Deep Dives with WhaleTalesandGlitter The conference was fantastic. I got to see old friends and new, had great conversations about world building, character construction, grants for writers, and attend the Nebula award banquette, and hear the newest Grand Master: N.K. Jemisin speak.
A side effect of the trip is that I remembered I have an Instagram account and I practicing posting there more often.
I also took the leap and had professional photos done by the amazing Kaitrin Acuna! It was so much fun and the results are spectacular!
ID: Kate, a white woman with dark hair wears a white button down shirt with a black t-shirt underneath. Glowing blue smoke swirls behind her as she laughs.
ID: Kate, a white woman with dark hair and a golden laurel wreath, wears a dress covered in pomegranates. In one had she holds up a cluster of narcissi flowers as gold and red smoke swirls around her. She might be smirking.
July is looking to be ‘quiet’ at my house, but I’m itching to get back on the water, the whales are in hopping and I’ve been on land for too long, so… we’ll see what I can work out.
As always, thank you for joining me on this adventure,
Kate
