What’s that? You never heard about this carnival of homosexual, bisexual and transvestite animals? (That I just made up.) So sad… some people have a sheltered upbringing. Because there are definitely gay and, yes, even intersexual or transvestite animals throughout the world and there always have been. Sorry about that, bigots and religious nuts, but to adopt a phrase already in circulation: DEAL WITH IT.

It’s documented in thousands of scientific papers, even though a shameful number of scientists themselves have not been averse to clutching their pearls and squeamishly claiming not to see what their own data unequivocally shows. In 1999 Bruce Bagemihl did the world a great service by compiling and summarising this evidence for the ubiquity of non-reproductive (hetero- and homo-) sexual practices throughout the natural world in his mammoth 750-page Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. It’s an exploration of possible evolutionary and biological…