When domestic rams eschew female sheep, and instead hang around in the corner of the field with other rams, rubbing each other up, necking and even mounting each other, what is going on? Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's lover, coined the phrase "The love that dare not speak its name," in his poem "Two Loves," which was published in 1894. But what are the rams up to? Is this the love that dare not "baa" its name?
According to researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, it is. Six percent to 8 percent of domestic rams exclusively mate with other rams. The rams have "same-sex preferences," say the researchers. These sheep, the rest of us would say, are queer. Homosexual behavior has been documented in more than 450 species of animals, including penguins, Japanese macaques, chaffinches, grizzly bears, fruit bats and fruit flies. But what the OHSU scientists, in collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, have shown is that the brains of gay and straight rams are different.
More precisely, they have demonstrated that there are structural brain differences associated with naturally occurring variations in sexual partner preferences in sheep.