page_title: Homosexual behavior in animals
section_title: Black swans
hierarchical_section_title: Homosexual behavior in animals / Some selected species and groups / Birds / Black swans
context_page_description: Homosexual behavior in animals is sexual behavior among non-human species that is interpreted as homosexual or bisexual. This may include same-sex sexual activity, courtship, affection, pair bonding, and parenting among same-sex animal pairs. Various forms of this are found in every major geographic region and every major animal group. The sexual behavior of non-human animals takes many different forms, even within the same species, though homosexual behavior is best known from social species.
  Scientists perceive homosexual behavior in animals to different degrees. The motivations for and implications of these behaviors have yet to be fully understood. According to Bruce Bagemihl, the animal kingdom engages in homosexual behavior "with much greater sexual diversity – including homosexual, bisexual and nonreproductive sex – than the scientific community and society at large have previously been willing to accept." Bagemihl adds, however, that this is "necessarily an account of human interpretations of these phenomena".
context_section_description: An estimated one-quarter of all black swan pairings are of males. They steal nests, or form temporary threesomes with females to obtain eggs, driving away the female after she lays the eggs. The males spent time in each other's society, guarded the common territory, performed greeting ceremonies before each other, and (in the reproductive period) pre-marital rituals, and if one of the birds tried to sit on the other, an intense fight began. More of their cygnets survive to adulthood than those of different-sex pairs, possibly due to their superior ability to defend large portions of land. The same reasoning has been applied to male flamingo pairs raising chicks.
caption: Swans, Cygnus atratus
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