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{214} Chapter 6
A New Paradigm: Biological Exuberance
      What "causes" homosexuality is an issue of importance only to societies which regard gay people as bizarre or anomalous. Most people do not wonder what "causes" statistically ordinary characteristics, like heterosexual desire or right-handedness; "causes" are sought only for personal attributes which are assumed to be outside the ordinary pattern of life.
      — historian JOHN BOSWELL

      It is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited ... . We understand nature as source when we understand ourselves as source. We abandon all attempts at an explanation of nature when we see that we cannot be explained, when our own self-origination cannot be stated as fact.
      — philosopher and theologian JAMES P. CARSE1

Western science has been attempting to explain animal homosexuality for over two hundred years, yet it has run into considerable problems by trying to relate all aspects of animal behavior to reproduction (as the previous chapters have shown). The phenomena of animal homosexuality/transgender — and more generally, nonprocreative heterosexuality — require a rethinking of some of the most fundamental concepts in biology. Where are we to turn for models of animal behavior and evolution that can encompass such seemingly "unproductive" activities as homosexuality, heterosexual oral sex, and reproductive suppression? The key lies in what may at first seem an unlikely source of inspiration: the traditional knowledge of indigenous and tribal cultures. These aboriginal worldviews often regard gender and sexuality (in both animals and people) as inherently multiple and mutable; they are typically part of a larger interpretive framework incorporating sophisticated ideas, observations, learning, and lore about how the natural world works. Indigenous beliefs also show {215} remarkable correspondences with recent scientific discoveries in animal behavior and, more broadly, with a number of ideas emerging from "new" Western scientific and philosophical perspectives such as chaos science, post-Darwinian evolution, Gaia theory, biodiversity studies, and the theory of General Economy.

In this chapter we introduce the concept of Biological Exuberance, which synthesizes these two major strands of thought (indigenous and "modern") into a new way of viewing the natural world. This view is at once consistent with many orthodox ideas about evolution and biology while simultaneously offering a radical shift in perspective. Traditionally, scarcity and functionality have been considered the primary agents of biological change. The essence of Biological Exuberance is that natural systems are driven as much by abundance and excess as they are by limitation and practicality. Seen in this light, homosexuality and nonreproductive heterosexuality are "expected" occurrences — they are one manifestation of an overall "extravagance" of biological systems that has many other expressions.

Left-Handed Bears and Androgynous Cassowaries: Informing Biology with Indigenous Knowledge

To Western science, homosexuality (both animal and human) is an anomaly, an unexpected behavior that above all requires some sort of "explanation" or "cause" or "rationale." In contrast, to many indigenous cultures around the world, homosexuality and transgender are a routine and expected occurrence in both the human and animal worlds. The sporadic attention devoted to animal homosexuality/transgender by Western science spans a little over two centuries, while aboriginal cultures have accumulated a vast storehouse of knowledge about the natural world — including the sexual and gender systems of animals — over thousands of years. It stands to reason, then, that Western science might be able to learn something from indigenous sources. In this section we'll explore some traditional tribal beliefs about animal (and human) homosexuality/transgender from around the world and examine the ways in which these ideas are relevant to contemporary scientific inquiry.

Aboriginal Views of Animal Homosexuality and Transgender
      Ideas about animal (and human) homosexuality/transgender figure prominently in three cultural complexes on different continents: native North America, the tribes of New Guinea/Melanesia, and indigenous Siberian/Arctic peoples. Beliefs about sexual and gender variability in animals recur systematically throughout many of the cultures in each of these areas and are paralleled by a corresponding recognition and valuation of human homosexuality and transgender. Although these are by no means the only cultures in the world where such beliefs exist, a relatively extensive body of anthropological research has documented the indigenous views on this subject particularly well for these regions. These cultures offer a useful introduction to aboriginal systems of knowledge concerning gender and sexuality and may be taken as representative of the sorts of worldviews that are likely to {216} be encountered in other indigenous cultures.2 Moreover, the forms that such beliefs take show striking similarities in each of these regions. Aboriginal ideas about animal homosexuality and transgender are encoded in four principal cultural forms: totemic or symbolic associations of animals with human homosexuality and transgender; beliefs about mutable or nondualistic gender(s) of particular species, often represented in the figure of a powerful cross-gendered animal or in sacred stories ("myths") about sexual and gender variability in animals; ceremonial reenactments or representations of animal homosexuality and transgender, sometimes combined with ritual reversals of ordinary activities; and animal husbandry practices that encourage and value intersexual and/or nonreproductive creatures.3

      North America: Two-Spirit, Shape-Shifter, Trickster-Transformer

      Most Native American tribes formally recognize — and honor — human homosexuality and transgender in the role of the "two-spirit" person (sometimes formerly known as a berdache). The two-spirit is a sacred man or woman who mixes gender categories by wearing clothes of the opposite or both sexes, doing both male and female (or primarily "opposite-gender") activities, and often engaging in same-sex relations. As is true for homosexual and/or transgendered individuals in many other indigenous cultures around the world, two-spirit people are frequently shamans, healers, or intermediaries in their communities, performing religious and/or mediating functions (e.g., between the sexes, or between the human, animal, and spirit realms).4 In many Native American cultures, certain animals are also symbolically associated with two-spiritedness, often in the form of creation myths and origin legends relating to the first or "supernatural" two-spirit(s). Among the Oto people, for example, Elk (Wapiti) is described as cross-dressing in several origin legends and is considered the original two-spirit; consequently, two-spirits in this culture always belong to the Elk clan.5 A Zuni creation story relates how the first two-spirits — creatures that were neither male nor female, yet both at the same time — were the twelve offspring of a mythical brother-sister pair. Some of these creatures were human, but one was a bat and another an old buck Deer.6 In "How the Salmon Were Brought to This World," a Nuxalk (Bella Coola) story that describes the origin of food, the first two-spirit accompanies all the animals (including a Raven, cormorant, crane, osprey, hawk, and mink) on a long canoe journey in their quest for the first salmon. Each of the animals finds a different kind of salmon, while the two-spirit brings back the first berries for people to eat. A mythic journey is also featured in the origin tale of the Kamia (Tipai/Southern Diegueno) people, in which the divine two-spirit and his/her twin sons use the feathers from a number of birds — among them, the crow — to make headdresses.7 Finally, the Mothway origin story of the Navajo relates the adventures of an extraordinary figure known as Be'gochidi. Divine trickster, shape-shifter, world-creator, and two-spirit, Be'gochidi is a blond (or red-haired), blue-eyed god who mediates between animals and humans, men and women, and Navajos and non-Navajos. S/he is also intimately associated with Butterflies: born at the ancestral home of Moths and Butterflies, Be'gochidi is responsible for raising the Butterfly People and frequently indulges in fondling or masturbation of both male and female Butterflies.8
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In other Native American cultures, animal associations with transgender and homosexuality take the form of personal vision quests or totemic creatures linked with two-spirits. Among various Siouan peoples such as the Dakota, Lakota, and Ponca, for example, a man or woman becomes two-spirited if his or her sacred dreaming involves Buffalo (especially a hermaphrodite Buffalo or a white Buffalo calf), or if he or she has a vision of Double-Woman, who often appears in the form of a Black-tailed (Mule) Deer. An Omaha (Sioux) man's calling to be a two-spirit might be announced by an owl.9 Among the Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), a vision quest involving the thunderbird (typically identified with the golden eagle or Harris's hawk) destines an individual to become a member of the Contrary Society, a group of men who are (heterosexually) celibate, do everything the opposite way, and sometimes have relations with two-spirit people. Those manifesting sexual and gender variance (contraries and two-spirits) may also be symbolically associated with birds that have orange-red coloration, such as orioles or tanagers, and possibly also with Dragonflies.10 The Arapaho people believe that two-spirit is a blessing bestowed as a supernatural gift from birds or mammals, while Hidatsa two-spirits typically wear Magpie feathers in their hair as part of ceremonial dress. This symbolizes their connection to powerful holy women who are associated with Magpies in this culture.11 In some cases, individual two-spirit shamans may invoke the powers of specific animals, such as a Wolf tutelary for the Tolowa two-spirit shaman Tsoi'tsoi and a Grizzly Bear tutelary for the two-spirit shaman haywič of the Snoqualmie (Lushootseed/Puget Sound Salish) people.12

Bears play a further role in Native American cultures with regard to homosexuality /transgender. A fascinating association between (of all things) left-handed Bears and two-spiritedness reappears in many tribes throughout North America.13 In a number of First Nations — for example, the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Kutenai, Keres, and Winnebago — the Bear is seen as a powerful cross-gendered figure. In these tribes, Bears are thought to combine elements of both masculinity and femininity, and they are also seen as mediators between the sexes and between humans and animals (much like the role of the human two-spirit, which is also recognized in all these tribes). Their strength, size, and ferocity are considered quintessentially male attributes, yet Bears are often perceived as female in these cultures and referred to with feminine pronouns and terms of address regardless of their biological sex. In addition, many of the prominent Bear stories and ceremonies concern female Bears, especially the omnipotent, life-giving Bear Mother figure (who often engages in mythic marriage, sexual intercourse, or transformation with humans).14 There is also a consistent association between Bears and menstruation. A number of Native American peoples have beliefs about the dangers of women going into the forest during their period, since it is thought that they will attract Bears who may try to mate with (or attack) them. Other tribes mythologically connect Bears to menstrual blood or consider Bears to be powerfully drawn to human females in other respects, especially at the onset of puberty.15

Most strikingly, Bears of both (biological) sexes are thought to be left-handed — a quality traditionally associated with the feminine in these cultures — and Bear rites often require ceremonial activities to be performed with the left {218} hand. In fact, beliefs about the left-handedness of Bears pervade all aspects of ritual life in some tribes. In the Nuu-chah-nulth culture of Vancouver Island, for example, Bear hunters eat with their left hand (they are the only people allowed to do so) in order to identify with their prey, since Bears are believed to reach for bait with their left paw. In myths and tales such as that told by contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth artist and storyteller George Clutesi, Chims-meet the Bear hunts for salmon with his left paw while his mother picks berries with her left paw; Clutesi illustrates one of his tales with a drawing of a Bear using his left paw to swat salmon. Left-handedness is even encoded in the structure of the language: when speaking Nuu-chah-nulth, special affixes can be added to words to indicate that a left-handed person is talking or is being referred to. Of course, this "left-handed speech" is also typical of Bears when speaking in myths, stories, and jokes.16

Many First Nations sacred stories and myths, especially those involving a prankish trickster-transformer figure, reveal other associations between animals and homosexuality/transgender. A common theme is that of a male coyote marrying or having sex with a male mountain lion, fox, or other animal — or sometimes even with a man — often by changing sex, mixing gender characteristics, or pretending to be a member of the opposite sex. In the Okanagon story "Coyote, Fox, and Panther," for instance, coyote tricks a panther (mountain lion) into marrying him by pretending to be female; the presence of human two-spirits in this culture is therefore considered to be decreed by coyote. Similar tales are found in many other cultures. In fact, an Arapaho story combines this theme with that of the supernatural two-spirit in the tale of Nih'a'ca (the first two-spirit), by having Nih'a'ca pretend to be a woman and marry a mountain lion (a symbol of masculinity). The trickster theme takes many other forms as well. The Fox Indians, for example, have a tale in which a male turtle is fooled into having sex with a human trickster figure, who fashions a vulva for himself out of an Elk's spleen and disguises himself as a woman named Doe-Fawn. The Winnebago trickster man also uses the internal organs of an Elk to make female parts for himself, then becomes pregnant by having sex with a number of male animals, including a fox and a blue jay.17

Two-spirit is still a living tradition in many First Nations, and there is a continuing association of animals with homosexuality and transgender in the stories, life narratives, and poetry of contemporary Native Americans. Two-spirit Mohawk writer Beth Brant gives the trickster theme a gender spin in her tale "Coyote Learns a New Trick." In this story, a female coyote tries to fool a female fox into sleeping with her by dressing up as a man; the joke is on coyote, however, because fox only pretends to be duped, and the two end up making love without any disguises. In "Coyote and Tehoma," Daniel-Harry Steward of the Wintu nation offers a poetic account of love between a male coyote (accompanied by several animal spirit-guides) and Tehoma, the handsome male "god of the smoking mountain." In this fable, the howling of wild coyotes is attributed to the heartbreak of their mythic coyote ancestor, who calls forlornly to his male lover after Tehoma has been changed into the stars. In "Song of Bear," a contemporary version of a traditional Nuu-chah-nulth tale recorded by Anne Cameron, the human-animal marriage of the Bear Mother myth is given a lesbian retelling. A young woman goes into the {219} forest (disregarding warnings about the attraction of Bears to menstruating women) and draws the attentions of a female Bear; they end up falling in love and living together "forever after" in the Bear's den. Finally, for contemporary two-spirits Terry Tafoya (Taos/Warm Springs), Doyle Robertson (Dakota), and Beth Brant, creatures such as the dragonfly, hawk, eagle, heron, and salmon have powerful personal and symbolic resonance, while the searing poetry of two-spirit writer and activist Chrystos (Menominee) is also replete with bird and other animal imagery.18

A tricksterlike figure plays a central role in another manifestation of animal homosexuality /transgender in indigenous cultures, the ritual enactment of same-sex activity during sacred ceremonies. Among the Mandan, a Siouan people of North Dakota, a spectacular religious festival known as the Okipa was held annually for at least five centuries (until the late 1800s) to ensure the success of the Buffalo hunt and to ritually dramatize their cosmology.19 Replete with sacred communal dancing, chanting, and prayers in an ancient liturgical dialect (used only during this festival), the four-day ceremony includes shamanic rites of self-mutilation (such as skewering and suspension of initiates), feats of astounding physical endurance, and graphic sexual imagery. Throughout the festival a special Bull Dance is performed by men representing Bison: cloaked in the entire skins and heads of the animals, they realistically portray the movements of Bison. Surrounding them are dancers dressed as various other animals as well as men impersonating holy women. The dance culminates on the final day with symbolic homosexual activity between the Bison bulls and a clownlike figure called Okeheede (known variously as the Foolish One, the Owl, or the Evil Spirit), who is painted entirely black and adorned with a Buffalo tail and Buffalo fur. Wielding an enormous wooden penis, Okeheede simulates anal intercourse with the male Bison by mounting them from behind "in the attitude of a buffalo bull in rutting season." He erects and inserts his phallus under {220} each dancer's animal hide, even imitating the characteristic thrusting leap that Bison make when ejaculating. The Mandan believe that this ceremonial homosexuality directly ensures the return of the Buffalo in the coming season.20

Ceremonial "performances" of sexual and gender variability occur in several other Native American sacred animal rites, such as the Massaum ceremony of the Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) people. Also known as the "Crazy" or "Contrary" Animal Dance (from the word massa'ne meaning foolish, crazy, or acting contrary to normal), this 2,000-year-old world-renewal festival was performed annually on the Northern Plains until the early 1900s. Timed with key celestial events in the midsummer sky (including the solstitial alignment of three stellar risings), the Massaum ceremonial cycle invokes and draws upon the powers of two-spirit and "contrary" shamans in order to reinvigorate the earth and all its inhabitants. The five-day ritual is thought to have been bequeathed to the Tsistsistas people by the prophet Motseyoef, an immortal androgynous shaman who presides over each reenactment of the rite in the form of a human representative. A prominent feature of the Massaum is a pair of sacred Bison horns, originally taken from a hermaphrodite Buffalo. Among the central participants are a set of sacred male and female canids, all impersonated by men dressed in animal skins and imitating the actions of the creatures: two wolves — a male red (or yellow) wolf and a female white (or Gray) Wolf — as well as a female kit (or blue) fox. As master hunters, game protectors, and messengers from the spirit world, these animals teach humans how to hunt with the proper reverence and skill. The Massaum culminates with a ritual hunt of epic proportions, in which nearly a sixth of the Tsistsistas population participates by impersonating all the various creatures of their world. Each species is "led" by someone who has dreamed of that animal acting in a peculiar way. On the final day, the androgynous contrary shamans begin their sacred clowning, doing things backward and generally acting in an eccentric manner. As part of their holy "craziness," they symbolically hunt the animals, "shooting" them with special miniature bows and arrows held in a reversed position. Upon ritually killing each creature, they immediately bring it back to life, thereby assisting in the divine regeneration and fertilization of the earth. By uniting primordial opposites within themselves and in their actions, the two-spirit and contrary shamans are seen by the Tsistsistas as instrumental in restoring wholeness to the world.21

Ritual transgender is also enacted in the Buffalo Ceremony of the Oglala Dakota, a girl's puberty rite presided over by a shaman dressed as a Bison. During this ceremony the shaman combines attributes of both male and female Buffalo: he imitates the courting behavior of a Bison bull, but his face is painted with a pattern symbolic of a Bison cow, and he is designated with the word for a female Buffalo. Likewise in a Hopi Buffalo dance, the men portraying Bison wear some articles of women's clothing, while female dancers also don some men's garments. In other sacred kachina ceremonies of the Pueblo peoples, some female animal figures are impersonated by male dancers. The Hopi goddess Talatumsi, or Dawn Woman, for example, who is the mother of Bighorn Sheep-men, is portrayed by a man dressed as a female Mountain Sheep. The bawdy kachina clowns in Hopi ceremonies sometimes simulate sexual intercourse with a burro, one man pretending to be the {221} animal while the other mounts him from behind. The Zuni animal fertility goddess Chakwena — mother of rabbits and other game animals — is also impersonated by a man: s/he performs symbolic versions of female reproductive powers, including ritual menstruation in the form of rabbit blood dripped down his/her legs, and a four-day ceremonial enactment of childbirth. Ritual animal birth can also be associated with Wintu two-spirit shamans: one man, for example, was believed to experience menstrual periods and was thought to have given birth to a pair of snakes.22

Native American rites and beliefs about sexual and gender diversity sometimes also extend to the sphere of animal husbandry, for example among the Navajo. Consummate shepherds and goatherds, these Southwestern people have developed sophisticated animal-management techniques over the many centuries of tending their domesticated herds. Yet their practical knowledge is also informed by the Navajo recognition and honoring of gender and sexual variability in all creatures. Traditionally, hermaphrodite Sheep and Goats are considered integral and prized members of the flock, since they are thought to increase the other animals' productivity and bring prosperity. For this reason they are never killed, and their presence is further encouraged by several ritual practices. When hunters catch an intersexual Deer, Pronghorn, or Mountain Sheep, for example, they rub its genitals on the tails of their domesticated female herd animals and on the noses of the males, as this is believed to result in more hermaphrodite Sheep and Goats being born into the flocks. In addition, rennet from the stomachs of intersexual animals is rubbed on Sheep to increase their growth and milk production. This convergent valuing of transgender in both wild and domesticated animals is reflected in Navajo mythology and cosmology: Be'gochidi, the divine two-spirit described earlier, is regarded as the creator of both game animals and domesticated creatures. S/he is also god of the hunt and a tutelary who instructs humans in stalking techniques and hunting rituals, as well as a prankster who sneaks up on hunters and causes them to lose their aim by grabbing their testicles. Some of the hunting rituals associated with Be'gochidi also involve ceremonial reversals. For example, the skin of a slain Deer, after being removed from the animal, is repositioned with the head resting on the carcass's rump, sometimes with the Deer's tail placed in its own mouth.23


The cassowary is considered a powerfully androgynous creature by many indigenous New Guinean peoples. This is the one-wattled cassowary (Casuarius unappendiculatus).

      New Guinea: Male Mothers and the Living Secret of Androgyny

      In addition to reappearing in the native cultures of North America, beliefs about animal (and human) homosexuality/transgender also feature prominently among the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and Melanesia. Homosexuality is an important aspect of human social and ceremonial interactions in many tribes, while homosexual or transgendered animals are an equally pervasive aspect of their belief systems. In a number of cultures, all males undergo a period of homosexual initiation lasting for several years (from prepuberty to young adulthood). Semen from adult men is considered a vital substance for "masculinizing" boys, and therefore adults "inseminate" younger males through oral or anal intercourse. Other forms of sexual and gender variance also exist: the Sambia and Bimin-Kuskusmin cultures, for instance, recognize a "third sex" among humans (applied to hermaphrodites or intersexed individuals), and the Sambia also have a prominent origin {222} myth involving male parthenogenesis, in which the first people were believed to be created through homosexual fellatio. Ceremonial transvestism occurs in some New Guinean tribes as well, along with beliefs and ceremonies relating to "male menstruation" (often ritualized as bloodletting of the penis).24 A number of animals are symbolically and ceremonially associated with homosexuality in these cultures as well. Among the Sambia, for example, plumes from several birds, including the Raggiana's Bird of Paradise, the kalanga parrot, and several species of lorikeets (a type of parakeet), are ritually worn by boys and adolescents to mark their various stages of initiation and participation in homosexual activities. Homosexual bonding among the Ai'i people is emblematized by two men sharing a bird of paradise totem, which also connotes the joint land-holding rights of the male couple. And in the Marind-anim tribe, the wallaby, jabiru stork, and cassowary are symbolically associated with homosexuality.25

Beliefs about variant gender systems in animals — including all-female offspring and various forms of sex change — also occur in several New Guinean cultures.26 Opossums, Tree Kangaroos, and other tree-dwelling marsupials are thought by the Sambia to start out life as females, with only some individuals later becoming male once they reach adulthood.27 Thus, the life cycle of these species, in the indigenous conception, involves a sort of sequential sex change for animals that end up as male. In contrast, the nungetnyu — a kind of bird of paradise or bowerbird — is thought to exist only in female form throughout its life. The Sambia liken the communal courtship dances of this species to their own dance ceremonies, except with a gender inversion (all-female bird groups versus all-male human groups).28 Other birds are thought to go through multiple sex changes: they start out life as female, then some briefly become male birds as adults and develop brightly colored plumage, after which they revert back to a female form (with dull plumage) in their old age. The Bimin-Kuskusmin also believe that several species of birds of paradise go through multiple gender transformations during their lives, but with the opposite sequence: the brightly plumaged individuals are considered to be females and the drably plumaged ones to be males. Likewise, a daily oscillation between genders is attributed to a species of nightjar: these nocturnal birds are thought to be either male or female in the daytime but both male and female at night.29 Parallel ideas about sex change in sago beetles and their grubs are held by the Bedamini, Onabasulu, and Bimin-Kuskusmin peoples.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of beliefs about ambiguous or contradictory genders in animals concerns the cassowary. A large, flightless, ostrichlike bird of New Guinea and northern Australia, the cassowary is considered by many New Guinean peoples to be an androgynous or gender-mixing creature, and it often assumes a preeminent mythic status in these cultures. The cassowary possesses many of the physical attributes of strength, audacity, and ferocity that are traditionally considered masculine in these cultures. It has powerful legs, feet, and razor-sharp claws (capable of inflicting serious, even lethal, injuries to people); a dinosaur-like bony helmet or "casque" (used for crashing through the jungle); dangerously sharp spines or quills in place of wing feathers; booming calls (described as "warlike trumpet barks"); bright blue and red neck skin with pendulous, fleshy {223} wattles; and an imposing size (over five feet tall and 100 pounds in some species). Yet numerous New Guinean peoples also regard the cassowary to be an all-female species (or for each bird to be simultaneously male and female) and often associate them with culturally feminine elements.

The Sambia, for instance, consider all cassowaries to be "masculinized females," that is, biologically female birds that nevertheless lack a vagina and possess masculine attributes (they're thought to reproduce or "give birth" through the anus). Similarly, the cassowary is perceived as an androgynous figure by the Mianmin people: the bird is thought to have a penis, yet all cassowaries are considered female. One Mianmin tale actually recounts how a woman with a penis was transformed into a cassowary, and this mythological trope is found in the sacred stories of several other New Guinean peoples. Other cultures elevate the cassowary to a prominent position in their traditional cosmologies and origin myths as a generative figure, a powerful female creator of food and human life. The cassowary is believed to combine elements of femininity and masculinity in many other tribes, a number of whom also practice ritualized homosexuality, such as the Kaluli and Keraki. Finally, in a striking parallel to the cross-gendered Bear figure of many Native American cultures, the androgynous cassowary is also considered an intermediary, of sorts, between the animal and human worlds. In addition to mythic transformations and marriages between people and cassowaries, in several tribes this creature is not classified as a bird at all, but is grouped in the same category as human beings because of its size and upright, two-legged gait. Combining images of male-female and bird-mammal, the Waris and Arapesh peoples also believe that cassowaries suckle their young from their neck wattles or wing quills, which are found in both male and female birds.30

Ritual performance of the cassowary's gender-mixing also occurs. Among the Umeda people, for example, a central feature of the tribe's Ida fertility rite involves two cassowary dancers whose costumes, movements, and symbolism combine both male and female elements. The dancers impersonating the birds are both men and are called by a name that refers to male cassowaries. Yet they are identified with the ancestral mothers of the tribe (who act as female tutelary spirits to the dancers), and the entire ceremony is said to have belonged in mythic times only to women and was performed without men. Each cassowary dancer also has an exaggerated phallus consisting of a large black gourd worn over the head of his penis, but the enormous mask/headdress that he carries (representing the cassowary's plumage as {224} well as a palm tree) is imbued with feminine symbolism (in the form of its inner layer of underbark). The dancing of the cassowary impersonators emphasizes their male sexuality: they rhythmically hop and move their hips in such a way that their penis gourds flip upward and strike their belts in a motion that imitates copulation, and their phallic organs are said to become enormously elongated during the all-night ceremony. At the same time, the two men frequently hold hands and dance as a pair, activities that are otherwise seen only in female dancers among the Umeda.31

The figure of the gender-mixing cassowary reaches its greatest elaboration among the Bimin-Kuskusmin people. In the belief system of this remote tribe of the central New Guinea highlands, the cassowary presides over an entire pantheon of androgynous and sex-transforming animals, and it is physically embodied in the form of special human representatives that ritually enact its transgendered characteristics. In addition to the cassowary and sex-changing birds and grubs mentioned previously, numerous other creatures are believed to combine male and female attributes in the worldview and mythology of the Bimin-Kuskusmin. Several species of marsupials, a bowerbird, and a python are all considered androgynous or hermaphroditic. The wild boar is regarded as a feminized male that never breeds but instead fertilizes androgynous plants with its semen and menstrual blood. And a species of centipede is thought to be female on its left side and male on its right, using its venom to bring life to other androgynous centipedes and death to nonan-drogynous creatures.

At the pinnacle of this transgendered bestiary stands the creator figures of Afek, the masculinized female cassowary, along with her brother/son/consort Yomnok, a feminized male fruit bat or echidna (the latter being a spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal related to the platypus). Both are descended from a powerful double-gendered monitor lizard and are believed to be hermaphrodites possessing breasts and a combined penis-clitoris. Afek gives birth through two vaginas (one in each buttock), while Yomnok gives birth through his/her penis-clitoris. The gender-mixing of these mythical figures parallels the way they straddle the categories of bird and mammal: the cassowary is a "mammallike" bird — huge, ferocious, flightless, with furlike feathers — while the echidna is a "birdlike mammal" — small, beaked, and egg-laying (the fruit bat is also birdlike, being a flying mammal).

The Bimin-Kuskusmin elect certain people in their tribe to become the sacred representatives and lifelong human embodiments of these primordial creatures: they undergo special initiations and thenceforth ritually reenact and display the intersexuality of their animal ancestors. Two postmenopausal female elders in the clan are chosen to represent Afek: they undergo male scarification rituals, experience symbolic veiling or dissolution of their marriages and children, adhere to combined male and female food taboos, receive male names, and are awarded both male and female hunting and gardening tools. During ceremonial functions — in which they are sometimes referred to as "male mothers" — they ornament themselves with cassowary plumes, often cross-dress in male regalia, or wear exaggerated breasts combined with an erect penis-clitoris made of red pandanus fruit. Physically intersexual or hermaphrodite members of the tribe are selected to be the embodiments of Yomnok. They are adorned with echidna quills or dried fruit-bat {225} penises, wear both male and female clothing and body decorations, sport an erect penis-clitoris (made from black, salt-filled bamboo tubes) during rituals, and are lifelong celibates.32 In each case, these living human representatives of the primal animal androgynes become highly revered and powerful figures in the tribe. They apply their sacred double-gendered power in curing, divination, purification, and initiation rites and officiate at ceremonies that require the esoteric manipulation and mediation of both male and female essences. Above all, these transgendered and nonreproductive "animal-people" are symbols of fertility, fecundity, and growth — corporeal manifestations of what one cassowary man-woman calls "the hidden secret of androgyny ... inside the living center of the life force."33

Ritualized "performances" of homosexuality combined with animal imagery are also found in the extraordinary initiation and circumcision rites of several cultures of Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), including the Nduindui and Vao peoples. During these secret ceremonies, symbolic homosexual intercourse is enacted or implied between young male initiates and their elder initiators or ancestral male spirits. Along with other ritual inversions of everyday activities or breaking of taboos during the rites, these ceremonial homosexual activities are thought to imbue the participants with an unusually intense, dangerous, and glorious power. All of these activities coalesce around the image of the shark. The ceremonies are known as shark rites; participants wear elaborate shark headdresses; the initiators /elder partners in actual or symbolic homosexual relationships are referred to as sharks; the rituals are staged in enclosures that symbolize a shark's mouth; and circumcision itself is likened to the bite of a shark. In some cases there is a connection to other gender-mixing creatures. During the enactment of ceremonial homosexual overtures or intercourse, for example, participants sometimes refer to hermaphrodite Pigs, and the story of one Vanuatu culture hero bearing the title of "shark" tells how his son brought intersexual Pigs to several islands. The linked themes of androgyny and Pigs also appear in narratives from outside the Vanuatu region, for example among the Sabarl people. In their tale "The Girl Who Dressed as a Boy," a young woman adopts warrior paraphernalia — and later assumes the full garb of a man — during a heroic encounter with a giant Pig who is the offspring of an androgynous creator god.34

Gender-mixing Pigs also feature prominently in another fascinating Vanuatu cultural practice that honors sexual and gender variance in animals (in some cases alongside ritual human homosexuality/transgender). Hermaphrodite Pigs are highly prized in a number of Vanuatu societies, being valued for their uniqueness and relative rarity. Although only a minority of Pigs are intersexual, their husbandry is an esteemed pursuit (especially in the northern and central regions), and animal breeding practices that result in hermaphrodite offspring are encouraged. As a result, nearly every village in some areas has intersexual Pigs, and gender-mixing animals comprise a fairly high proportion of the total domesticated Pig population, perhaps as much as 10-20 percent in some regions. In fact, on these islands there are more hermaphrodite mammals — probably numbering in the thousands — than anywhere else in the world. These intersexual Pigs possess internal male reproductive organs and typically grow tusks like boars (although they are {226} sterile), yet their external genitalia are intermediate between those of males and females, tending toward the female. Behaviorally, they often become sexually aroused in the presence of females and may even mount other females while exhibiting clitoral erections. Among the people of Sakao, seven distinct "genders" of hermaphrodite Pigs are recognized and named, ranging along a continuum from those with the most femalelike genitalia to those that are truly ambiguous to those with the most malelike genitalia. The indigenous classification of these gradations of intersexuality exceeds in completeness any conceptual or nomenclatural system developed by Western science. So precise is this vocabulary, in fact, that the native terminology was actually adopted by the first Western biologist who studied the phenomenon in order to distinguish the various types of gender mixing.

In these Vanuatu cultures, hermaphrodite Pigs are a status symbol of sorts, since their ritual sacrifice is required to achieve progressively higher rank within the society (they are also used in dowries). In some cases, a sophisticated monetary system and trading network has developed in which pigs actually function as a type of currency, complete with forms of "pig credit" and "pig compound interest." In this system, intersexual Pigs (and the sows that produce them) can be worth up to twice as much as nonintersexual Pigs. The prestige of these animals also extends to the domestic sphere: hermaphrodite Pigs are often depicted on finely carved household items such as plates and bowls, and intersexual Pigs are sometimes kept as pets. They may even become highly valued "family members," to the point of being suckled by a woman like one of her own children. Moreover, men who raise tusked Pigs (either boars or hermaphrodites) are in some cases viewed as sexually ambiguous or androgynous themselves, since their intimate tending and nurturing of the Pigs is thought to parallel the mother-child relationship. Simultaneously "father" and "mother" to the creatures, they constitute another example of the indigenous concept of "male motherhood" as it pertains to animals.35

     
A cloak belonging to the Inuit shaman Qingailisaq. Just below each shoulder is the image of a Pukiq, a mythical transgendered Caribou that combines and transforms elements of male and female, animal and human.

      Siberia/Arctic: Reversal and Renewal, Traversal and Transmutation

      A similar constellation of phenomena concerning animal homosexuality and transgender is found among the numerous indigenous cultures scattered across Siberia and the Arctic (including the Inuit and Yup'ik [Eskimos] of arctic North America).36 Aboriginal Siberian shamans often harness the power of cross-gender animal spirit guides or assume characteristics of the opposite sex under the direction of spirit animals. The most powerful male shamans among the Sakha (Yakut) people, for example, are believed to undergo a three-year initiation during which they experience aspects of female reproduction, including giving birth to a series of spirit animals (such as a Raven, loon, pike, Bear, or Wolf). Some female shamans also claim to manifest their power by transforming themselves into a male Horse. Gender reversals and recombinations are most prominently expressed in the phenomenon known as the transformed shaman, a sacred man or woman who takes on aspects of an opposite-sex identity. Transformation ranges along a continuum from a simple name-change, to partial or full transvestism during shamanic rituals, to living permanently as a transgendered person (including marrying a husband in the case of a transformed male or marrying a wife for a transformed female). {227} Among the Chukchi, transformed shamans are sometimes associated with animal powers through spirit-name adoptions and animal transmutations. One such male shaman was named She-Walrus, for instance, while another believed s/he had the ability to change into a Bear when curing patients. Animal gender transformations that parallel those of shamans are also encoded in sacred stories. Among the Koryak, for example, a mythological figure named White-Whale-Woman turns herself into a man and marries another woman. In another story s/he marries a male Raven who has turned himself into a woman (and whose son later gives birth to a boy).37

The ornate and beautiful costumes worn by shamans in many Siberian cultures often combine animal impersonation with cross-dressing. The robes, headdresses, and footgear of male shamans among the Yukaghir, Evenk, and Koryak people, for example, are usually women's garments adorned with animal imagery. This may include an "antlered cap" bearing a symbolic representation of Reindeer antlers, or two iron circles representing breasts sewn to the front of the cloak. These sacred vestments — often made from an entire animal skin — are believed to allow the shaman to incarnate an animal or undertake supernatural bird-flight during trance, and s/he often performs dances that closely imitate the movements of a particular species that serves as his/her tutelary spirit. Shamanic ceremonies in a number of Siberian tribes also sometimes involve all-male dances imitating the mating activities of various animals, aimed at promoting sexual activity and a "renewal of life." The word for shaman in the Samoyed language actually has the same root as the words to rut (of a stag) or to mate (of game birds). Chukchi transformed shamans do not generally wear special garments or impersonate animals; however, female-to-male shamans sometimes wear a dildo made from a Reindeer's calf muscle, attached to a leather belt. In addition, Chukchi women and girls who are not shamans often perform all-female dances imitating various species, including white-fronted geese, long-tailed ducks, swans, Walruses, and seals. Some of these dances actually represent the courtship displays of male Ruffs or rutting Reindeer, and dances may also conclude with two girls lying on the ground and simulating sexual intercourse with each other.38

Reindeer (known as Caribou in North America) are regarded in the shamanic contexts of some Arctic cultures as powerful transgendered creatures belonging to the supernatural. The Iglulik Inuit (Eskimo), for example, believe in mythical Caribou known as Silaat (in their male form) or Pukit (in their female form; singular Pukiq). These enormous animals are swifter and stronger than ordinary Caribou, can create dangerous weather conditions, and are thought to hatch from giant eggs on the tundra (sometimes identified with actual wild-goose eggs). The males wear female adornments on their robes (such as white pendants) and can transform themselves into females (some Silaat also assume the form of bearded seals or Polar Bears). The Silaat/Pukit also serve as spirit guides to shamans: one shamanic initiate named Qingailisaq tells of encountering a herd of such creatures, one of whom metamorphosed into a woman. The other Silaat then instructed him to make a shaman's cloak that resembled her garment. The robe Qingailisaq created combines both male and female elements: in pattern and overall style it resembles a man's coat, but in its ornaments and decoration it is similar to women's clothes. The {228} cloak's white pendants evoke the garments of the transgendered Caribou, and an embroidered image of a transformed white Caribou or Pukiq adorns each shoulder. These Caribou are thought to be the original male descendants of Sila, a powerful deity and life force associated with gender variability. The Iglulik Inuit culture is based on a ternary gender system that recognizes a "third sex" or gender category. This encompasses a number of different cross-gendering phenomena such as "transsexuals" (people believed to have physically changed sex at birth), transvestites (people who adopt or are assigned the clothes, name, and other markers of the opposite sex), and shamans (who may be fully transgendered, or combine various male and female elements, or undergo mythic transformations between sexes and species). Sila occupies a central position in the Inuit cosmology as an intermediary between gender poles, and Sila's descendants — the transgendered Caribou — are a further manifestation of this bridging and synthesis of "opposites" (male and female, animal and human).39

Some Inuit peoples share with Native American tribes the belief that Bears — in this case, Polar Bears — manifest qualities of gender mixing and left-handedness.40 In Siberian cultures, however, the association of Bears with sexual and gender variability is most notable in the activities generally known as Bear ceremonialism. A pan-Siberian religious complex, Bear ceremonialism involves the ritual killing of a Bear, whose skin and head are then placed on a sacred platform and feted for many days. Among the Ob-Ugrian peoples, these carnivalesque ceremonies involve feasting, dancing, the singing of sacred epics, and the performing of satirical plays. The latter typically include bawdy displays of transvestism: all female roles are played by {229} men, who often simulate sex acts with one another. In ecstatic ritual dances men may also remove each other's clothes. During Nivkh (Gilyak) Bear festivals, male hunters wearing articles of female clothing (and men's clothing backwards) try to grab a Bear from behind or kiss it. This highlights a fundamental aspect of Siberian Bear ceremonialism: transgressions of gender and sexual boundaries are simply one of many ritual "reversals" that occur during the festivities (others include saying the opposite of what one means, and the breaching of various other social prohibitions). Bear ceremonies thereby serve, in the words of one anthropologist, as a "liminal (mediating) period of ritual excess," believed by these Siberian peoples to be essential for both human and animal fecundity and prosperity.41

Dramatic performances of gender reversals and sexual ambiguity are also an integral component of the elaborate animal renewal and fertility ceremonies of the Yup'ik (Alaskan Eskimo) people. Such festivals feature "male mothers," hermaphrodite and androgynous spirits, ritual transvestism, and cross-gender impersonation of animals, among other elements.42 One of the most important ceremonies is Nakaciuq or the Bladder Festival, a ten-day winter-solstice feast in which seals and other sea mammals are honored and invited to return for the next year (so named because the animals' souls are believed to reside in their bladders, which are inflated and displayed during the ceremony). Another important ceremony is Kelek or the Masquerade, part of a larger festal cycle in which shamans and others interact with and appease the spirits of game animals. Images of male motherhood, pregnancy, and birth abound during these ceremonies. At the beginning of the Bladder Festival, for example, two men (often shamans) are designated "mothers" and pretend to be married to each other, with a third man playing the part of their "child." In the Masquerade, male participants occasionally enact the part of a nursing woman, wearing a female mask and two wooden breasts carved with nipples. Male shamans dressed in women's clothing also undertake trance journeys to visit animal spirits, symbolically give birth to spirit beings, and observe rituals associated with menstruation and childbirth following their spirit encounters. At the climax of this festival, a young boy dressed in women's clothes acts as a ceremonial staff-carrier. Transvestism occurs in other Yup'ik festivities as well, involving both men and women disguising themselves as the opposite sex or two men dressing as bride and groom and pretending to get married. Men also sometimes wear articles of women's clothing for luck when hunting land mammals.

The Tuunraat or spirit helpers visited by shamans — including the powerful guardians of game animals — are often considered to be hermaphrodite beings. During the Masquerade festival they are impersonated by men wearing masks that meld elements of male-female and animal-human. One such mask, for example, combines a downturned mouth — a standard female symbol in Yup'ik art — with labrets at both corners of the mouth (ornaments worn in lower lip piercings by men), symbolic of a male Walrus's tusks. A stylized sea-mammal tail for a nose and other animal imagery also adorn the mask. Masks of androgynous spirits such as Qaariitaaq — represented as a sort of "bearded woman" — are used in the Bladder Festival as well. Animal dances, in which people impersonate various creatures using realistic movements, sounds, and costumes, are also a central aspect of the {230} Yup'ik ceremonial cycle. Most notable of these are a dance in which a man portrays a mother eider duck, wearing a birdlike hunting helmet decorated with female phallic symbols (two young boys play "her" ducklings), and another in which two men impersonating a loon and a murre also wear these gender-mixing helmets as they dance side by side. As in Siberian Bear ceremonialism, all of these activities are part of an overall pattern of reversals and traversals characteristic of Yup'ik fertility ceremonies. Ordinary activities are turned upside down and the boundaries between "opposite" worlds are rendered fluid (e.g., participants walk backwards, invert traditional hospitality rituals, go nude or wear clothing inside out, etc.). In Yup'ik cosmology these sacred inversions are believed to remake, renew, and regenerate the natural world, ultimately insuring a harmonious relationship between humans and animals.

Although Siberian/Arctic peoples do not appear to accord special meaning to intersexuality among domesticated animals (as in some Native American and New Guinean cultures), nonbreeding animals do feature prominently in some Siberian animal husbandry practices. The Chukchi, for example, believe that castrated and nonreproductive animals insure the success of their domesticated Reindeer herds. The largest bucks are always gelded and, along with several "barren" does, allowed to fatten rather than being slaughtered. Castration is often accomplished by the herdsman biting directly through the animal's spermatic ducts or tubules. These "eunuchoid" Reindeer (both male and female) are highly prized, as they are considered essential for the prosperity of the entire herd. Likewise, the Sakha (Yakut) people always donate one mare from their large herds of domesticated Horses to a shaman. This animal is not permitted to breed during its life, and it becomes an embodiment of the cosmic life force and a symbol of fertility for the tribe as a whole.43

Despite wide differences in cultural contexts and details, there are a number of remarkable correspondences and continuities between native North America, Melanesia, and Siberia in their perception of alternative systems of gender and sexuality in animals. In numerous indigenous cultures widely separated in space and time, we find recurring variations on five central themes: Animals are totemically or symbolically associated with homosexuality and transgender, often in a shamanic context. Powerful gender-mixing creatures such as the Bear, cassowary, and Caribou/Reindeer occupy a central position in tribal cosmologies and worldviews. Ritual enactments of animal homosexuality and transgender are commonplace and are often directly associated with notions of fertility, growth, or life essence; this is sometimes concretized in the image of a "male mother" figure and may also be part of a larger pattern of sacred reversals or inversions. Among domesticated creatures, hermaphrodite and nonbreeding animals are cultivated and highly valued. And finally, both animals and people that combine aspects of maleness and femaleness or exhibit sexual variation are consistently honored and ceremonialized, and an essential continuity is recognized between homosexuality /transgender in both human and nonhuman creatures. While fascinating in their own right, these cross-cultural parallels are perhaps even more significant in terms of their implications for contemporary scientific thought.
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Chimeras, Freemartins, and Gynandromorphs: The Scientific Reality of Indigenous "Myths"
      How accurate are indigenous views about animal homosexuality and transgender? In other words, do the species associated with homosexuality and transgender in these cultures actually exhibit same-sex behavior or intersexuality? If taken literally, the connection is certainly less than systematic: many animals linked in aboriginal cultures with alternate sexualities are not in fact homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered, while many animals in which sexual and gender variance have been scientifically documented do not have symbolic associations with homosexuality /transgender in these cultures. Moreover, many of the more "fanciful" indigenous beliefs about animals are obviously false (at least in their specifics).

Nevertheless, some striking parallels involving particular species suggest a connection that may be more than fortuitous. For example, homosexuality — including full anal penetration between bulls — is common among American Bison, same-sex courtship and pair-bonding occur in Black-billed Magpies, male and female ho-mosexualities are found in Caribou, and same-sex mounting and coparenting also occur among Bears. These species are all directly identified with homosexuality and/or transgender in some Native American tribes. Moreover, in many cases where the exact species that figures in indigenous conceptions of homosexuality is not accurate, a closely related animal (often in another geographic area) does exhibit the behavior. For example, homosexual activity has not been recorded among New Guinean wallabies, yet it does occur in Australian Wallabies. Likewise, although homosexuality is not yet reported for the cassowary, it has been observed in Emus and Ostriches (related species of flightless birds). Other examples are summarized in the table below.

Some Correspondences between Indigenous Beliefs
and Western Scientific Observations of Animal Homosexuality/Transgender (TG)
Animal traditionally associated
with homosexuality / TG		Homosexuality /
TG reported in scientific literature		Homosexuality /
TG observed in related species
North America
Black-tailed Deer (Lakota, Zuni)yes (Mule Deer)yes (White-tailed Deer)
Elk (Oto)yes (Wapiti)yes (Red Deer, Moose)
Buffalo (Lakota, Ponca, Mandan, etc.)yes (American Bison)yes (other Buffalo species)
Bighorn Sheep (Hopi)yes (Bighorn Sheep)yes (other Mountain Sheep)
mountain lion (Okanagon, etc.)noyes (African/Asiatic Lion)
fox, coyote (Arapaho, Okanagon, etc.)yes (Red Fox)yes (Bush Dog)
Gray Wolf, red wolf (Tsistsistas)yes (Gray Wolf)yes (otherCanids)
Bears (Nuu-chah-nulth, Keres, etc.) {232} yes (Grizzly, Black Bear)yes (other carnivores)
jackrabbit, cottontail species (Zuni)noyes (Eastern Cottontail)
bat species (Zuni)noyes (Little Brown Bat, other Bats)
golden eagle, Harris's hawk (Tsistsistas)noyes (Kestrel, Steller's Sea Eagle)
owl species (Omaha, Mandan)yes (Barn Owl)yes (Powerful Owl)
oriole, tanager species (Tsistsistas)noyes (Yellow-rumped Cacique)
Magpie (Hidatsa)yes (Black-billed Magpie)yes (other Crows)
blue jay (Winnebago)noyes (Mexican Jay)
crow (Kamia)noyes (Raven, Jackdaw)
turtle species (Fox)yes (Wood Turtle)yes (Desert Tortoise)
salmon species (Nuxalk)noyes (European Salmon species)
butterfly/moth species (Navajo)yes (Monarch, others)yes (other butterfly species)
dragonfly species (Tsistsistas)yes (Dragonflies)yes (Damselflies)
New Guinea
wild boar, Pig (Bimin-Kuskusmin, Sabarl, etc.)yes (domestic Pig)yes (Warthog, Peccaries)
New Guinean wallabies (Marind-anim)noyes (Australian Wallabies)
arboreal marsupials (Sambia, Bimin-Kuskusmin)yes (Tree Kangaroos)yes (other marsupials)
fruit bat species (Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (other Fruit Bats)
echidna (Bimin-Kuskusmin)nono
jabiru stork (Marind-anim)noyes (White Stork)
Raggiana's Bird of Paradise (Sambia)yes (Raggiana's)yes (see below)
other birds of paradise (Ai'i, Sambia, etc.)noyes (Victoria's Riflebird)
bowerbird species (Sambia, Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (Regent Bowerbird)
cassowary (Sambia, Bimin-Kuskusmin, etc.)noyes (Emu, Ostrich, Rhea)
black-capped & purple-bellied lories (Sambia)noyes (several Lorikeet species)
other New Guinean parrots (Sambia)noyes (Galah)
nightjar species (Bimin-Kuskusmin) {233} nono
python species (Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (other snake species)
monitor lizard (Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (other lizard species)
shark species (Nduindui, Vao)nono
sago grub (Bedamini, Sambia, Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (Southern One-Year Canegrub)
centipede species (Bimin-Kuskusmin)noyes (Spiders, other arthropods)
Siberia / Arctic
white whale (Koryak, Inuit)yes (Beluga)yes (other Whales & Dolphins)
bearded, ringed, & Spotted Seals (Yup'ik, Inuit)yes (Spotted Seals)yes (Harbor Seal, other Seals)
Walrus (Chukchi, Yup'ik, Inuit)yes (Walrus)yes (other pinnipeds)
Caribou/Reindeer (Inuit, Yukaghir, Chukchi, etc.)yes (Caribou)yes (other Deer)
Horse (Sakha)yes (Takhi, domestic Horse)yes (other Equids)
Wolf (Sakha)yes (Wolf)yes (other Canids)
Bears (Ob-Ugrian, Nivkh, Chukchi, Inuit, etc.)yes (Grizzly, Black, Polar Bears)yes (other carnivores)
eider duck (Yup'ik)noyes (Lesser Scaup, other Ducks)
loon (Sakha, Yup'ik)noyes (Grebes)
murre species (Yup'ik)yes (Common Murre)yes (other diving birds)
Ruff (Chukchi)yes (Ruff)yes (other sandpipers)
Raven (Sakha, Koryak)yes (Raven)yes (other Crows)
pike species (Sakha)noyes (Salmon species)

Some of the most precise correspondences involve transgender (particularly intersexuality) rather than homosexuality per se. Modern science has provided startling confirmation of a number of indigenous "beliefs" about purportedly cross-gendered animals, most notably the left-handed Bear figure of many Native American cultures. Biologists have actually uncovered evidence that some species of Bears probably are left-paw dominant. "Handedness," or laterality, is a widespread {234} phenomenon in the animal kingdom, with species as diverse as primates, cats, parrots, and even whales and dolphins showing preferences for the use of a right or left appendage (or side of the body) in various behaviors and tasks.44 Although in most species there is considerable variation between individuals as to which side is dominant, it does appear that at least some kinds of Bears are consistently "left-handed." Scientists and naturalists report that Polar Bears, for example, regularly use their left paw for attack and defense as well as for clubbing seals and hauling them out of the water. In many cases they exhibit greater development of the left paw and may also use their left forelimb and shoulder to carry large objects. The consistency of left-paw use is exemplified by an incident in which wildlife biologists set up snare traps to capture and tag Polar Bears (for long-term study of their migrations). The traps were triggered by the bear's reaching for some bait with its paw, and all 21 Bears caught in this way were snared by their left front foot.45 Incidentally, there also appears to be a correlation between left-handedness and homosexuality/transgender in humans: a higher than average proportion of gays and lesbians are left-handed (or ambidextrous), and one study found the percentage of left-handers among lesbians to be more than four times that among heterosexual women. Left-handedness also appears to be more common among transsexuals, particularly male-to-female transsexuals.46 As yet, no studies have looked for possible correlations between laterality and homosexuality/transgender in animals.

Another astonishing correspondence concerns the attraction of Bears to human menstrual blood, a widespread belief in many Native American tribes. Implausible as this connection may sound, zoologists decided to conduct experiments to see if there was any truth to these "superstitions." Employing controlled olfactory-preference tests on Polar Bears in both laboratory and field settings, they found that the animals were indeed significantly more attracted to the odors in human menstrual blood than to a number of other smells, including several animal and food odors as well as nonmenstrual blood. In fact, human menstrual odors in many cases elicited a response from the Bears as strong as that prompted by the smell of seals (their primary food in the wild), which they could detect from more than 1,200 feet away.47

Even more extraordinary, biologists have found actual cases of physical gender-mixing in Bears. In 1986, Canadian zoologist Marc Cattet made a stunning discovery: the presence of significant numbers of "masculinized females" in wild populations of Grizzly, Black, and Polar Bears. These animals have the internal reproductive anatomy of a female combined with portions of the external genitalia of a male, including "penislike" organs. As many as 10-20 percent of the Bears in some populations may exhibit this phenomenon.48 Such individuals are able to reproduce, and most adult intersexual Bears are actually mothers that successfully raise cubs. In fact, the reproductive canal in some intersexual Bears extends through the phallus rather than forming a vagina, so that the female actually mates and gives birth through the tip of her "penis" — similar to the way female Spotted Hyenas mate and give birth through their "penile" clitoris. These findings offer striking parallels to the gender-mixing Bear Mother figure of many Native American tribes, as well as the Bimin-Kuskusmin and Inuit beliefs about "male mothers" and androgynous animals that give birth through a penis-clitoris.
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Intersexual animals that combine male and female sex organs (and in some cases that are intermediate between males and females in their body proportions and size) also occur spontaneously in other mammals that are not usually hermaphroditic, such as primates (e.g., Common Chimpanzees, Rhesus Macaques, Savanna Baboons), whales and dolphins (e.g., Bowhead and Beluga Whales, Striped Dolphins), marsupials (e.g., Eastern Gray and Red Kangaroos, various Wallabies, Tasmanian Devils), and rodents and insectivores (e.g., moles).49 In fact, a veritable profusion of different kinds of gender mixing has been uncovered throughout the animal world — so much so that scientists have had to develop a special terminology to refer to the bewildering variety of intersexualities. Fanciful-sounding names such as chimeras, freemartins, mosaics, and gynandromorphs are actually the technical terms used by biologists to designate animals with various types of chromosomal and anatomical gender mixing.50 In Greek mythology, a chimera is a fantastic creature combining features of a lion, goat, and serpent, while Hermaphroditus is the child of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. It is ironic that Western science uses names with mythological connotations to refer to animals that are actually the living "proof" of indigenous myths about homosexual and transgendered species. The left-handed androgynous Bear may exhibit chimerism (scientifically speaking), but it isn't "chimerical" at all — it's alive and well and living in North America!

A freemartin is an animal that becomes intersexual as a result of association in the womb (or egg) with a twin of the opposite sex (note the motif of twinning in some Native American two-spirit traditions that involve animals, such as the Kamia and Wintu), while chimera refers to an animal with organs that combine genetically male and female elements. Similar to chimerism, a mosaic is an individual that has variable chromosomal patterns and a corresponding mixture of male and female traits. Some of the diverse types of chromosome configurations (in addition to the "typical" female and male patterns of XX and XY, respectively) include XXY, XXX, XXYY, XO, and even combinations of these in different cells of the body. Each chromosomal pattern, in turn, manifests itself as a different mixture of male and female sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics, sometimes juxtaposed in separate parts of the body, sometimes combined in the same organ, and sometimes blending together as a gradation of traits or a combination of all of these.51

One particularly remarkable type of mosaic is called a gynandromorph: an animal that {236} appears to be literally divided in half, one side (usually the right) male in appearance, the other side female, often with a sharp line of demarcation between them. This occurs in a number of different kinds of animals, such as butterflies, spiders, and small mammals, and bears a noteworthy resemblance to the Bimin-Kuskusmin belief about a centipede that is female on its left side and male on its right. More than 40 cases of gynandromorphism have also been reported in birds such as finches, falcons, and pheasants. In these cases the two halves of the creature differ in plumage (and sometimes even size), usually corresponding to internal reproductive organs of both sexes (an ovary on one side, a testis on the other). Some gynandromorphs have more of a gender mixture in their appearance while still preserving a central dividing line. One warbler, for example, had a left side that was male while its right side was a tapestry of male and female plumage characteristics. Although little information is available on the behavior of gynandromorphs, it appears that some individuals may exhibit a combination of both male and female behavior patterns. One spider gynandromorph, for example, courted and mated with females using its male organs, but also built an egg case as is typical for females. On the other hand, a gynandromorphic chimney swift exhibited primarily (heterosexual) "male" behavior throughout its life, regularly pairing with females and fathering offspring.52

Other examples of the correspondences between indigenous views about transgendered animals and scientific observations can be found. Sambia (and other New Guinean) beliefs about all-female offspring, gender mixing, and sex change in marsupials and other animals may seem far-fetched, yet recent discoveries by zoologists studying a variety of species bear remarkable similarities to these ideas. For example, geneticists recently determined that significant numbers of female wood lemmings are actually chromosomally male (having an XY pattern). Moreover, some of these animals only give birth to female offspring, so that the population consists of 80 percent females. Similar phenomena occur in at least 7 other species of rodents, and individual females that only produce female offspring have also been reported as a recurring phenomenon in at least 12 different species of butterflies.53 True transsexuality is most often found in fishes (and "lower" animals), where the combination of sex change with chronological color change in some coral reef species echoes Sambia beliefs about sequential sex and plumage changes in birds (and other creatures). Cases of chromosomal "sex reversal" (males that have a female chromosomal pattern, or vice versa) occasionally occur in mammals such as moles, mole-voles, and primates (e.g., Orang-utans and Hanuman Langurs).54 And while Inuit beliefs about gender-mixing Caribou that wear female garments are not literally true, female Caribou often exhibit physical "transvestism" in the sense that they bear antlers (a trait typically associated with males in all other species of Deer).

Striking parallels also exist with regard to the gender transposition, androgyny, and homosexuality that the Sambia and Bimin-Kuskusmin associate with some birds. Female Raggiana's Birds of Paradise, for example, have been observed performing courtship displays to one another. This behavior combines not only same-sex interaction but a gender-role "reversal," since typically only males display in this species. Ornithologists have also determined that males of the king bird of paradise {237} do indeed associate in pairs — recall that among the Ai'i people, some birds of paradise are symbolically related to male couples.55 As for the cassowary, its polyandrous social system — in which one female mates with several males, who are then left to incubate the eggs and raise the young on their own — shows some correspondence to the notions of "female potency," male motherhood, and gender reversal attributed to this bird by a number of native New Guinean peoples.56

Scientists have also discovered some unusual details about the cassowary's genital anatomy that bear an uncanny resemblance to indigenous ideas about the "androgyny" of these creatures, especially the Bimin-Kuskusmin belief about the bird's "penis-clitoris." Unlike most other birds, the cassowary male actually does possess a penis; however, this organ does not transport semen internally as it does in mammals. The cassowary's phallus is described by scientists as being "invaginated," that is, it has a tubular cavity that opens at the tip of the penis but is not connected internally to the male reproductive organs. This vagina-like cavity is in fact used to retract the phallus by turning it "inside out," causing the nonerect penis to resemble the finger of a glove that has been pushed inward. Consequently, although the male cassowary inserts his erect penis into the female during mating, he ejaculates semen through his cloaca, an orifice at the base of the penis that also doubles as the bird's "anus" and urinary organ. Females also mate, lay eggs, defecate, and urinate all through the same orifice, the cloaca (as in all other female birds) — but the cloaca is exceptionally large in this species, being capable of passing eggs weighing up to one and a half pounds. Most amazingly, all female cassowaries also possess a phallus, which is essentially identical to the male's in structure but smaller. The "female phallus" is also sometimes referred to as a clitoris, but it would be equally valid to speak of a "male clitoris" in this species (as noted in chapter 5), since the male cassowary's "penis" is not in fact an ejaculatory organ.57 Thus, the cassowary's genital anatomy exhibits a bewildering juxtaposition of "masculine" and "feminine" traits: both males and females possess a penis/clitoris (a phallic organ that nevertheless is "vaginal" in form and nonejaculatory in function), and both sexes also possess another genital orifice that doubles as an anus. Indigenous beliefs about masculinized female cassowaries, the bird's penis-clitoris, anal birth, and women with phalluses being transformed into cassowaries are not nearly as outlandish as they sound.

Another interesting parallel between homosexuality/transgender in animals and indigenous views of these phenomena in people concerns the notion of "hy-permasculinity." Contrary to the stereotypical Euro-American view of male homosexuality, in some Native American cultures two-spirit people who are biologically male may manifest (or are considered to manifest) a sort of "excess" or intensification of masculinity (at the same time as they embody a combination of both male and female traits). Among the Coahuiltec, Crow, Keres, and Zuni peoples, for example, male two-spirits are sometimes actually physically larger, taller, and/or stronger than non-two-spirit men, and greater strength has also been attributed to two-spirits among the Luiseno, Hidatsa, and O'odham (Papago). Some male two-spirits are distinguished warriors in their tribes, are notably aggressive, or otherwise fight alongside non-two-spirit males, for example among the Osage, Illinois, Miami, and Hidatsa. The Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) people include male two-spirits in {238} war parties, in part because they are thought to possess a "stored-up virility" that will insure the success of the endeavor, while Lakota and Ojibway male warriors sometimes have sex with male two-spirits in order to partake of the latter's courage, ferocity, and fighting skills. And as already mentioned, in a number of Melanesian cultures (as well as other cultures around the world), homosexuality is thought to have a strengthening or "masculinizing" effect on men and in some cases to express qualities of male potency and even exaggerated virility. Among animals, there are a number of intriguing concordances with this rather unexpected association between male homosexuality/transgender and "extra" masculinity. As discussed in preceding chapters, gander pairs among Greylag Geese and Black Swans are distinguished by their superior strength, courage, aggression, and (in some cases) more intense bonding, while male pairs in a number of other species can be offensively (rather than just defensively) aggressive. In addition, transgendered or homosexual individuals in American Bison, Savanna (Chacma) Baboons, and Hooded Warblers sometimes exceed other males in overall size, weight, or other physical dimensions. Such individuals may also achieve a high-ranking social status (e.g., Greylag Geese, Savanna Baboons), which echoes the honored status of two-spirits in many Native American cultures. Furthermore, transgendered males in several species are often more "virile" or heterosexually active than nontransgendered males (e.g., Northern Elephant Seals, Red Deer, Black-headed Gulls, and Common Garter Snakes). And in Bighorn Sheep, homosexual mounting is more characteristic of "masculine" rams than of "effeminate" rams (i.e., behaviorally transvestite males, who act like females).58

Are these various connections between indigenous beliefs and scientific facts merely fortuitous, or do they represent accurate observation of animals on the part of aboriginal cultures? In other words, how likely is it that indigenous peoples could have been aware of the often esoteric details of animal behavior and biology that "corroborate" their beliefs? Although much indigenous thinking about animals is encoded in mythological terms (as we have seen), it is often grounded in a sophisticated framework of direct observation and study of the environment (sometimes known as ethno-science). This is true not only in the area of zoology, but in fields as diverse as botany, geology, geography, oceanography, meteorology, astronomy, and so on. In fact, aboriginal knowledge about the organization of the natural world often mirrors the findings of more "objective" scientific inquiry, sometimes down to the most minute detail. Many tribal cultures, for example, have developed comprehensive classification schemata for plant and animal species that rival the system of scientific nomenclature used by biologists today. The Arfak mountain people of New Guinea identify and name 136 distinct bird species in their environment — almost exactly the number recognized by Western science for the same area.59 Indigenous knowledge of animal behavior and other aspects of zoology is often remarkably accurate, and in many cases the behavioral, anatomical, or physiological phenomena involved have only been "discovered" or verified by Western science in the last decade or two. As one biologist remarks, "The sum total of the [indigenous] community's empirically based knowledge is awesome in breadth and detail, and often stands in marked contrast to the attenuated data available from scientific studies of these same populations."60
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The Inuit and Aleutian Islanders, for instance, have an extraordinarily profound understanding of Walrus behavior and social organization, including knowledge of a number of more unusual habits and aspects of the animals' social life that have been verified by zoologists only relatively recently. The use of pharyngeal (throat) pouches in producing metallic sounds, adoption of orphaned pups, all-male summer herds, and mass mortality during huge stampedes were all "unexpected" or "controversial" phenomena when first discovered by Western observers, yet they had been known to indigenous peoples long before their existence was documented by biologists.61 Western scientists initially considered solitary male Musk-oxen to be older individuals who were "superfluous" to the population; Inuit people, in contrast, believe that these old males are not a surplus component of the population at all. Based on direct observation of Musk-oxen as well as their traditional beliefs about the animals, the Inuit maintain that such animals are a vital element of Musk-ox social structure, serving as a focal point for regathering of the population after the rut as well as functioning as "elders" for the herd. Scientists now know that such males are not in fact superfluous, but serve an important role in the population structure of the species.62 Moreover, biologists studying other animals have even gone so far as to ascribe "elder"-like roles to postreproductive individuals, suggesting that in short-finned pilot whales, for example, "their principal biological contribution might be to learn, remember, and transmit what pilot whales need to know."63 Similarly, traditional Cree knowledge about beaver social organization and population regulation rivals the most sophisticated wildlife-management programs developed by Western science — ones that utilize computer modeling, satellite mapping, and complex statistical analysis.64

So it is not unreasonable that aboriginal beliefs about animal homosexuality /transgender might represent systematic and careful observations of the natural world, rather than simply the projections of a mythological system. Many indigenous peoples are undoubtedly aware of gender-mixing creatures as part of their natural environment and incorporate them into their belief systems. As anthropologist Jay Miller has observed, "Hunting tribes were also astute enough observers ... to notice that other Animal People had hermaphroditic members, and often equated these with the berdaches [two-spirits]."65 Intersexual Bison, for example, are recognized as such when seen by Native Americans in herds of wild animals. The Cree call them ayekkwe mustus (ayekkwe referring to the quality of being neither male nor female, or both, i.e., hermaphrodite; mustus meaning buffalo), while the Lakota and Ponca refer to them as pte winkte and pte mixuga, respectively — pte meaning buffalo and winkte or mixuga designating two-spirit — thereby drawing an explicit parallel between transgender in animals and people. The sight of a massive hermaphrodite "buffalo ox" towering above its companions undoubtedly reinforces this parallel for many indigenous observers, since it so closely resembles the way two-spirit males in some cultures are taller or stronger than both men and women. (Early white observers, in contrast, erroneously attributed the intersexuality of such Bison to castration, either by people or wolves.)66

As mentioned previously, the Navajo also recognize intersexual animals in several game species and are even aware of the "cactus bucks," transgendered Mule {240} Deer with distinctive antler configurations. They call these creatures biih nadleeh — biih for deer, nadleeh meaning transformed, constantly changing, or hermaphrodite (the same term applied to two-spirit people) — once again establishing the fundamental continuity between animal and human gender/sexual variability.67 Likewise, although cassowaries are elusive and difficult to observe in the wild, many New Guinean tribes hunt the birds and also keep them in captivity, utilizing semidomesticated cassowaries for food, trading, harvesting of plumes and other materials, in ceremonial functions, as pets, and even as a form of currency.68 It is likely, then, that at least some details of this creature's unusual genital anatomy are generally known to indigenous peoples from firsthand observation (rather than simply figuring in mythological contexts). Indeed, at least one tribe, the Mianmin, are aware of the bird's phallus — an organ whose existence and structure in males, let alone females, is not even widely acknowledged among Western ornithologists.69 Finally, we have already mentioned how indigenous Vanuatu knowledge and terminology relating to intersexuality in domestic Pigs rivals and in some cases even exceeds that of Western science.

In addition to intersexuality, other supposedly mythic traits of animals ritually associated with transgender/homosexuality have also been directly observed by native peoples in the creatures around them. The Inuit report seeing Polar Bears use their left paws to kill seals and throw ice and other objects at Walruses. The Halkomelem (Fraser River Salish) people of British Columbia also describe a curious behavior in Bears that suggests an awareness on their part of the creature's "left-handedness." They tell of Bears staying close to the right perimeter of a cave wall when departing their hibernation dens, thereby leaving the left paw free for defense. 70 White Buffalo — symbolically associated with two-spirit among the Lakota — were also regularly observed by native peoples in wild herds. When reports of these creatures first reached non-Indians, they were usually considered to be a figment of the "native imagination" or else were attributed to "artificial" circumstances, such as an escaped domestic cow, a hybrid offspring of such an animal, or the result of deliberate "whitening" of the hide by Indians. Now, of course, scientists recognize that the indigenous observations were correct: white Bison — both albino and nonalbino — are a recurring, albeit rare, phenomenon in wild populations of this species (as are other colors such as pied and gray).71

The discovery of widespread animal homosexuality and transgender by modern science puts a whole new spin on these parallels. Could it be that indigenous cultures actually know more about certain aspects of animal sexual and gender variance than zoologists do now? In other words, are species "erroneously" associated with homosexuality /transgender in various indigenous cultures actually genuine examples waiting to be "discovered" by Western science? Certainly when the scientific literature has previously failed to offer corroboration of a particular native belief about the behavior of an animal, it is often the case that the scientific record, and not the aboriginal observation, was in error. Time and again, indigenous beliefs have been dismissed as fanciful "superstitions," only to be confirmed once the technology and observational skills of modern science finally catch up with the age-old teachings of aboriginal peoples. For example, the Hopi have a folktale about hibernation in the {241} poorwill — a bird they call holchko, "the sleeping one" — a belief also shared by the Navajo. This was thought to be purely mythological until scientists discovered a torpid poorwill regularly hibernating during the winter (it was found in a rock crevice in California with a body temperature of about 64 degrees F). Ornithologists now officially recognize the poorwill as the only bird in the world that consistently undergoes long-term hibernation.72 Likewise, the traditional songs and oral narratives of the O'odham (Pima) people of Arizona refer to moths becoming drunk on the nectar of jimsonweed blossoms. Far from being an inventive anthropomorphization, this "belief" about insects was subsequently verified by Western science. Biologists observed "drunken" behavior in hawkmoths that had consumed jimsonweed nectar (which is now known to contain narcotic alkaloids), including erratic and uncoordinated flight, "crash landings," falling over, and other movements suggesting intoxication.73 The Kalam people of New Guinea believe that earthworms make croaking noises and can produce various other sounds such as whistles and stridu-lations. Biologists initially scoffed at these beliefs, yet specialists in worm biology have confirmed that earthworms, particularly some of the larger species found in Southeast Asia and Australia, can make an extraordinary range of sounds, including clicks, rasps, slurps, and even birdlike notes.74 Numerous references to a giant lizard known as kawekaweau occur in the folklore and legends of the Maori (the indigenous people of New Zealand). Initially dismissed by contemporary Western investigators as an imaginary creature, the kawekaweau has now been identified by zoologists as corresponding to a recently discovered species of gecko. Though it measures just over a foot long, it is in fact the largest of its kind in the world.75

Finally, Navajo legend tells of how Bears taught people about the medicinal properties of a plant known as na'bi or bear medicine, instructing them in the proper administration of the drug (including chewing and/or applying a powder or infusion directly to the skin). Scientists recently confirmed the connection of this indigenous pharmaceutical to Bears and also experimentally verified the effectiveness of the plant's active ingredient (ligustilide) as an antibacterial and antiviral. Extraordinary observations have been made of Grizzly Bears actually utilizing the plant as a topical medication on themselves. They chew the root, spit the plant juices and saliva on their paws, then rub the mixture thoroughly into their fur. In fact, this and other examples of "self-medicating" behavior in animals (most notably in Chimpanzees) have recently led to the establishment of a new scientific discipline called zoopharmacognosy, the study of animals' use of medicinal plants to treat themselves. Investigators working in this exciting field of inquiry have stumbled upon something that many indigenous peoples have known for an immensely long time, the fact that (in the words of one biologist) "not all pharmacists are human."76

Drunken moths, hibernating birds, giant geckos, croaking worms, white Buffalo, self-medicating Bears, left-handedness, menstrual attraction, sex change, gender mixing, homosexuality ... often the most "preposterous" aboriginal beliefs about animals turn out to have a basis in reality. One could hardly imagine more fantastical creatures than mother Bears with penises or cassowaries of both sexes with vaginal phalluses — yet these "myths" are biological facts. Thus, while many {242} indigenous ideas about animal homosexuality and transgender have yet to be confirmed, scientific "proof" may well be forthcoming — even for the most unlikely sounding of mythological scenarios.

An All-Encompassing Vision
      Indigenous "myths," sacred stories, and folk knowledge about animals (including information relating to homosexuality and gender mixing) are part of an oral tradition that is thousands of years old. The Nuu-chah-nulth culture of Vancouver Island, for example, stretches back uninterrupted to at least 3,000 B.C. according to archaeological dating methods, and is by no means a unique example.77 Contemporary native storytellers are, in a sense, the repositories of a scientific tradition whose continuity can be measured in millennia. It must be remembered that the "accuracy" of indigenous views about animals is being assessed against a Western science that has only recently begun to systematically investigate animal homosexuality /transgender (and that has generally been reluctant even to recognize these phenomena). New cases are being discovered all the time, often in species previously claimed never to exhibit homosexual behavior in the wild. Consequently, animal homosexuality reported in the scientific literature does not represent the sum total of homosexual wildlife in the world — only those cases that scientists happen to have noticed. Undoubtedly many examples have been missed or ignored, especially when the investigator harbors a strong personal distaste for the subject matter or is not prepared to observe same-sex behavior (as discussed in chapter 3).

So rather than simply checking the "correctness" of indigenous beliefs against what Western science has uncovered or currently "knows," perhaps we should also be using the "discoveries" of indigenous science as signposts for where zoology might direct its attentions on this subject. Traditional tribal knowledge about animal homosexuality/transgender can in fact serve as a model for more orthodox scientific investigation of the subject — for example, by leading the way toward study of these phenomena in new species. With thousands of animals remaining to be described in detail by zoologists — and new species being discovered each year — it is a daunting task to know where to begin and which species to focus on when studying homosexuality/transgender in the natural world. If coyotes and mountain lions, for example, or New Guinean birds of paradise, marsupials, and echidnas are consistently singled out by native cultures as being relevant in this area, Western science could do worse than swallow its pride and take these "myths" seriously. In determining once and for all whether these are merely superstitions, it may well discover (once again) that an unexpected kernel of truth in some of these beliefs merits further scientific inquiry.

Both indigenous and Western scientific paradigms have their own particular strengths and weaknesses; by forging a partnership between them, we can achieve a level of knowledge that exceeds the sum of the two. Although the two perspectives would appear to have much to benefit from such an interaction, they have rarely met within the scientific or academic establishment.78 An intimation of the sort of collaborative effort that is possible is provided by two examples involving {243} indigenous peoples in both North America and New Guinea. The Kalam and other tribes of New Guinea recognize several species of poisonous birds in their environment. One of these is the hooded pitohui, a species they refer to as a "rubbish bird" because it causes burning and numbness of the lips when eaten, and possibly even paralysis and death. Chemical defense through the use of naturally produced toxins in the skin (such as those found in the poisonous frogs of South America) was previously thought not to occur in birds. In 1990, however, scientists confirmed that these birds are indeed poisonous by isolating the chemical compound, homo-batrachotoxin, responsible for their toxicity. Their investigations would not have been possible without the help of the aboriginal hunters who shared their traditional knowledge of these species and helped the ornithologists locate specimens of the birds over several field studies. This discovery, in turn, spurred a renewed interest on the part of biologists in the long-neglected topic of avian chemical defense, and subsequent research has revealed a surprisingly large number and variety of poisonous bird species throughout the world.79

More than 15 years earlier, Robert Stephenson, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and Robert Ahgook, a Nunamiut Inuit (Eskimo) hunter, coauthored a scientific report on Wolf ecology and behavior. They pointed out that the indigenous view of Wolves involves a highly developed conception of the creature's behavioral flexibility and individuality, a perspective that zoologists are just beginning to countenance: "As a result of the vast array of behavioral events they have witnessed, the Nunamiut interpret wolf behavior in a broader, yet more intricate theoretical framework than that heretofore used by modern science; their in-depth knowledge gained from patient, on-the-ground observation has taught them that the adaptability and elasticity inherent in wolf behavior rivals that in human behavior."80 These cross-cultural collaborators suggest that Western scientists should adopt this sort of intellectual framework as a matter of course — a suggestion that rings especially true where animal homosexuality and transgender are concerned, since these phenomena epitomize the behavioral "elasticity" inherent in the natural world.

Important as these findings are, indigenous perspectives on animal (and human) homosexuality/transgender have a significance for Western science that extends far beyond the details of specific behaviors in particular animals. It is striking that in so many cultures that recognize some kind of alternate gender/sexuality system in animals, human homosexuality/transgender are also routinely recognized and even honored. Perhaps, then, what is most valuable about indigenous views of animal homosexuality/transgender is not so much the "accuracy" of beliefs about this species or that, but the overall worldview imparted by these cultures: a view of both animals and people in which sexuality and gender are each realms of multiple possibilities.

In fact, ideas about human and animal homosexuality tend to be mutually reinforcing. When people consider homosexuality/transgender to be an accepted part of human reality, they are not surprised to find gender and sexual variability in animals as well. Similarly, a culture living in intimate association with the natural world will undoubtedly encounter animal homosexuality/transgender on a routine {244} basis; these observations in turn contribute to the culture's view of such things as an integral part of human life. On the other hand, people accustomed to seeing homosexuality /transgender as an aberration will balk at encountering the phenomena in animals. And when a culture no longer lives in close association with wilderness, it will have less opportunity to encounter natural examples of variation in gender and sexual expression.

Consider two contrasting viewpoints on animal homosexuality that epitomize this difference. A man representing the Euro-American cultural tradition of the late twentieth century states that it is impossible for him to even imagine a "queer grizzly bear ... or a lesbian owl or salmon."81 In contrast, a contemporary Native American storyteller of the Wintu nation describes coyote as having a homoerotic relationship with another male, guided by the spirits of "grizzly, salmon, and eagle."82 In a remarkable coincidence, each individual has independently singled out virtually identical animals as somehow emblematic, but with radically different interpretations (neither was aware of the other's words). From the Anglo perspective, homosexuality is an insult to the animals' supposed "purity" or "virility" — sentiments that are echoed, less overtly, throughout the scientific discourse on the subject — while from the native perspective, such homosexuality is an affirmation of nature's plurality, strength, and wholeness.

If taken literally, the Wintu tribesman's account is clearly the more "accurate" of the two: homosexuality and/or transgender occur in Grizzly and Black Bears, Salmon of various species, and several birds of prey (including Barn Owls, Powerful Owls, Kestrels, and Steller's Sea Eagles). But that's almost beside the point: what is most significant is the inclusiveness of his vision, which stands regardless of whether any animals he mentions are "known" by zoology to be homosexual or transgendered. It is not the "accuracy" of individual observations that validates an indigenous perspective, but the expansiveness of that perspective which fosters such "accurate" observations in the first place. What Western science can learn most from aboriginal cultures is precisely this polysexual, polygendered view of the natural world. The next section explores how these ideas can be incorporated in a more concrete fashion into scientific discourse and shows that they are fundamentally compatible with a number of new developments in science and philosophy.

A Revolution Under Way: Contemporary Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives
      We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals ... . They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
      — naturalist HENRY BESTON

      In effect, chaos is life. All mess, all riot of color, all protoplasmic urgency, all movement — is chaos.
      — essayist HAKIM BEY83
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Biology must reconsider functional explanations based on evolution by natural selection, and it must recognize the inherent multiplicity of all life forms. The existence of a natural phenomenon is its function — regardless of how strange, complex, or "unproductive" it may seem. These are just a sample of some of the revisionist ideas that are now being proposed in biology, in conjunction with work in a broad range of other scientific disciplines. Although none of these ideas has yet been applied to the understanding of homosexuality/transgender, they have powerful implications for our ways of seeing these phenomena. The synthesis of these new ideas — and their application to a broad spectrum of natural and cultural phenomena, including systems of gender and sexuality — we will call Biological Exuberance. Biological Exuberance is not a theory or an "explanation" designed to supplant previous ones; rather, it is a fundamental shift in perspective, an alternative vision of something we thought we understood. Through this concept, we seek not so much to add new facts to existing knowledge, but (as Robert Pirsig puts it) to add a new pattern of knowledge to existing facts.84

In the following discussion, we will explore the potential inherent in certain contemporary scientific and philosophical perspectives to initiate such a re-visioning. Many of the ideas to be considered here are highly speculative or counter to traditional thinking, and often controversial even within their respective fields. Other, seemingly implausible, concepts will reveal themselves to be compatible with some of the most basic and long-standing concepts of orthodox biological theorizing. Moreover, each of the ideas to be discussed already represents a vast and complex field of knowledge; we can do no more than sketch the merest outlines of a road map for future investigation, suggesting some fruitful paths of inquiry. What the ideas we are conveniently summarizing under the rubric of Biological Exuberance have in common, though, is the capacity to precipitate a breakthrough in understanding (even when, by necessity, they are presented in abbreviated form). Taken together, they offer a new mode of perception, something infinitely more valuable than yet another simplistic "answer." Where basic paradigm shifts are concerned, we should not be puzzled by how firmly we previously held to so many different falsehoods; rather, we should be astounded that there are so many different truths (to paraphrase James Carse).85

Post-Darwinian Evolution and Chaotic Order
      Nature ... is fundamentally erratic, discontinuous, and unpredictable. It is full of seemingly random events that elude our models of how things are supposed to work.
      — DONALD WORSTER, "The Ecology of Chaos and Harmony"86

      Survival of the fittest, natural selection, random genetic mutations, competition for resources — we all know how evolution works, right? Not quite. Over the past two decades, a quiet revolution has been taking place in biology. Some of the most fundamental concepts and principles in evolutionary theory are being questioned, challenged, reexamined, and (in some cases) abandoned altogether. A new {246} paradigm is emerging: post-Darwinian evolution.87 "Heretical" ideas are being proposed by post-Darwinian evolutionists, such as the self-organization of life, the notion that the environment can beneficially alter the genetic code, and a suite of evolutionary processes to accompany the once hegemonic principle of natural selection. Moreover, many of the developments in this theorizing reflect surprising convergences with another "new" science, chaos theory.

"Put at its simplest, the new paradigm is an insistence on pluralism in evolutionary studies." That's how scientists Mae-Wan Ho and Peter Saunders characterize the essence of the new thinking on evolution.88 This paradigm is tackling a number of long-standing puzzles in biology — among them, global patterns of emergence and extinction of species, "mimicry" between animals separated by geography (in which two unrelated butterfly species in different parts of the world, for example, have evolved identical appearances), and convergence between the structure of biological and inorganic forms (in which jellyfish larvae, for instance, closely resemble the patterns made by falling drops of ink in water; or the similarity between animal coat markings and the standing wave patterns that can be generated on thin, vibrating plates). Post-Darwinian evolutionary biologists are synthesizing developments in a number of diverse disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, and molecular and developmental biology as part of their theorizing on these and other phenomena.

One proposal involves the possibility of the self-organization of life — the notion that the proteins, and in turn the enzymes and the cells, necessary for the first rudimentary life-forms may not have arisen randomly. Rather, experiments have shown that such building blocks can form "spontaneously" through the interaction of chemical and physical processes inherent in the molecules themselves and their watery medium. Similarly, convergences in form between distant species or organic and inorganic matter reveal underlying patterning processes that may actually "direct" evolutionary change. Another revolutionary proposal involves what is known as the "fluid genome": the hypothesis that the environment can beneficially change the genes of an organism. The genetic code was previously thought to be static and inalterable (aside from random mutations), but now biologists are recognizing that a dynamic, complex, two-way interaction between environment and genetics may occur, possibly even leading to the evolution of new species.89

Although much of this theorizing is admittedly in its infancy (and even, in a few cases, on the "fringes" of the scientific establishment), some of the most respected names in evolutionary science are participating in the reevaluation of basic tenets of the theory.90 World-renowned biologist and evolutionist Edward O. Wilson is at the forefront of the discussion, even going so far as to declare that evolution is, in a sense, a form of religion — "The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have"91 — thereby putting an ironic twist on the whole creationism-evolution controversy. Perhaps what is most significant in this entire discussion is not the explanatory power of particular theories (impressive as some of these are), but the spirit of intellectual openness and vision being embraced by many evolutionists, the willingness to reexamine once ironclad principles. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the questioning of the basic principle of {247} natural selection based on random genetic variations. A number of scientists — among them Stephen Jay Gould — have long criticized the attempt to find an adaptive explanation for "every surviving form, structure, or behavior — however bizarre, unnecessarily complex or outright crazy it may appear."92 Of course, the limitations of such "adaptationist" explanations are precisely the problem that orthodox biology confronts when it looks at the "bizarre" behaviors of homosexuality and nonreproductive heterosexuality. If biology is finally to come to terms with these phenomena, such explanations will need to be seriously reevaluated.

There are a number of parallels between post-Darwinian thought and the emerging science of chaos. Chaos theory is, fundamentally, a recognition of the unpredictability and nonlinearity of natural (and human) phenomena, including apparently destructive or "unproductive" events such as natural catastrophes. Although originally developed in the fields of mathematics, physics, and computer science, chaos science was quickly applied to biological phenomena. In fact, the periodic fluctuations of animal and plant populations were among the first examples of "chaotic behavior" to be uncovered in the natural world. Chaos theory has since been successfully used in the analysis of a wide range of natural and social phenomena, including biological systems (from the ecosystem to the cellular level) and evolutionary processes. Indeed, chaos scientist Joseph Ford has stated that "evolution is chaos with feedback."93 The fractal or "chaotically ordered" structure of nature has even been revealed in the behavior patterns of individual animals and in the "self-organizing" architecture of honeybee combs.94

Arrhythmias, discordant harmonies, and aperiodicities are some of the characterizations of "chaotic" natural phenomena that have been offered. These terms are attempts to convey the idea that fundamental principles of "pattern organization" direct, but do not entirely determine, the development or "shape" of biological (and other) entities. The internal dynamics of such systems generate unpredictable, but not random, patterns.95 This concept is echoed in recent reappraisals of "adaptationist" explanations for the diversity of plant and animal forms. As one ornithologist studying the proliferation and elaboration of bird plumage has observed, traditional evolutionary theory may be able to account for how a specific pattern, color, or form has developed, but it cannot explain why or how such incredible variety arose in the first place: "Such hypotheses explain a large variety of traits as divergent as a widowbird's tail, a rooster's comb, a peacock's train, or the black bib of a sparrow. While these hypotheses can account for some features of the trait, they cannot account for the enormous diversity in conspicuous traits — why some birds have red heads and others long tails even though the same basic process ... may be at work."96 Most current theories of phenomena such as plumage diversity still focus on the putative functional or adaptive role of specific patterns rather than the overall range of variation. However, this is an area where the application of principles from chaos theory might yield fruitful results.97

So too for diversity of sexual and gender expression. One of the more important insights to emerge from chaos theory is that the natural world often behaves in seemingly inexplicable or "counterproductive" ways as part of its "normal" functioning. According to Sally Goerner (in her discussion of chaos, evolution, and {248} deep ecology), "Time and again, nonlinear models show that apparently aberrant, illogical behavior is, in fact, a completely lawful part of the system." Similarly, biologist Donald Worster remarks that "scientists are beginning to focus on what they had long managed to avoid seeing. The world is more complex than we ever imagined ... and indeed, some would add, ever can imagine." More than half a century earlier, evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane presaged these thoughts when he commented that "the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose" — words we used to open this book.98 Although none of these scientists is referring specifically to homosexuality, the alternate systems of gender and sexuality found throughout the animal kingdom are exactly the sort of "discontinuities" and "irrational" events that should be generated in a "chaotic" system.

Particularly relevant in this respect is Goerner's statement of one of five basic "principles" of chaos: "Nonlinear systems may exhibit qualitative transformations of behavior (bifurcations). The idea is simple: a single system may exhibit many different forms of behavior — all the result of the same basic dynamic. One equation, many faces. A corollary to this idea is that a system may have ... multiple competing forms of behavior, each perhaps a hairsbreadth away, each representing stable mutual-effect organization."99 Transposed to the realm of sexuality, this idea offers the potential for intriguing insights: heterosexuality, homosexuality, and all variants in between can be seen as alternative manifestations of a single sexual "dynamic," as it were, which is itself part of a much larger nonlinear system. The "flux" of this system is played out in endless and infinitely varying expressions within individual lives, through various communities, between different species, across sequences of time, and so on and so forth.

Though chaos theory has been applied to various social phenomena, it has yet to be used in the analysis of patterns of sexual behavior. It remains to be seen whether something as relatively elusive as sexual and gender expression could even be quantified to the extent required by the rigorous mathematical models of chaos science. Nevertheless, the broader insights offered by chaos theory are readily apparent: seemingly incoherent or counterintuitive phenomena — whether in the realm of inorganic chemistry or "sexual chemistry" — are components of an overall pattern, regardless of whatever meaning (or lack thereof) they may have individually. In essence, deviation from the norm is part of the norm.

Biodiversity = Sexual Diversity
      Gaia theory ... has a profound significance for biology. It affects even Darwin's great vision, for it may no longer be sufficient to say that organisms that leave the most progeny will succeed.
      — JAMES E. LOVELOCK, "The Earth as a Living Organism"100

      Nearly two decades ago, British scientist James Lovelock published his book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, ushering in a new era in biological thought. What has come to be known as the Gaia hypothesis or Gaia theory has had an immeasurable impact on the way science looks at natural systems in general, and {249} evolution in particular. Gaia theory says that the sum of all living and nonliving matter forms a single self-regulating entity, analogous to a giant living organism. Converging with the results of post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, the Gaia hypothesis has prompted a rethinking of some of the most basic principles of evolution. Cooperation, in addition to competition, is seen as an important force of evolutionary change, while the search for adaptive explanations at the level of the individual has been shifted upward to also include whole species as well as the functioning of the entire biosphere. Although not without controversy, Gaia theory has spawned a number of innovative ideas, many of which are beginning to be empirically and experimentally verified, and has led to important cross-disciplinary collaborations between scientists.101

Once again, these new strands of thought have powerful implications for the way animal homosexuality and, more broadly, systems of sexuality and gender are construed. As Lovelock (quoted above) has observed, reproduction is not necessarily a required component of "survival" — in some instances, it may be beneficial for a species or an ecosystem as a whole if some of its members do not procreate. Of course, it is overly simplistic to equate homosexuality with nonreproduction (since, as we saw in previous chapters, many animals that engage in same-sex activity also procreate). There is also little evidence to support the idea that homosexuality operates as a kind of large-scale "population-regulating" mechanism (perhaps the most obvious "function" that would be ascribed to homosexuality in a Gaian interpretation). Nevertheless, one of the fundamental insights of Gaia theory — the value it accords to "paradoxical" phenomena — is directly applicable to homosexuality and transgender. Indeed, the "mosaic" or mixture of male and female characteristics found in intersexual animals such as gynandromorphs is used by some Gaian theorists as a model of multiplicity within oneness, the transformation of disjuncture into wholeness — in other words, the very image of the earth itself.102

Like chaos theory, the Gaia hypothesis recognizes that phenomena that appear inexplicable at the level of an individual organism or population may be part of a larger, complex tapestry: a web of seemingly incongruous forces that interact to produce the flow of life, often in ways that are difficult to fathom. Nowhere is this idea better formulated than in the concept of biodiversity. Stated simply, this is the principle that the vitality of a biological system is a direct consequence of the diversity it contains: "as diversity increases, so does stability and resilience."103 Traditionally, such diversity is thought of strictly in terms of number and types of species — that is, the physical composition of the system, usually expressed in terms of its overall genetic variety. Long-term studies of individual ecosystems have shown, for example, that the health and stability of a natural system is directly linked to the number of different species it contains.104

However, variability in number of species is not the only way that biological diversity can be expressed. At all levels of the natural world, social and sexual diversity exists — in every type of animal, and between different species, populations, and individuals. As an example, consider just one group of birds, the sandpipers and their relatives.105 An enormous variety of heterosexual and homosexual mating and social systems are found among the more than 200 species in this group. We {250} find monogamous pairings between birds of the same or opposite sex (Black-winged Stilts, Greenshanks); polygamous associations such as one male mating with more than one female (northern lapwings, curlew sandpipers) or one female mating with more than one male (jacanas), or bisexual trios in which two birds of the same sex bond with each other and with a third individual of the opposite sex (Oystercatchers); and "promiscuous" systems in which birds court and mate with multiple partners of the same or opposite sex without establishing pair-bonds, often involving communal courtship display grounds or leks (Ruffs, Buff-breasted Sandpipers). Even within a particular mating system such as heterosexual "monogamy," there are many different variations: some species form lifelong pair-bonds (e.g., Black Stilts); others are serially monogamous, forming sequential pairbonds or mating associations with different partners (kentish plovers, sanderlings); others are primarily monogamous but form occasional polygamous trios (Golden Plovers). Some species have largely "faithful" pair-bonds, with birds rarely if ever copulating with individuals other than their mate (Golden Plovers), while in others nonmonogamous matings with birds outside of the pair-bond are routine (Oystercatchers). And even within a given species, there are variations between different geographic areas: lesbian pairs occur in only certain populations of Black-winged and Black Stilts, for example, while snowy plovers exhibit extensive geographic variation in their heterosexual mating patterns, ranging from monogamy to serial polygamy (and numerous versions of each). Within a given population, there is also diversity between individual birds. In Oystercatchers, for example, only some birds participate in homosexual associations, nonmonogamous heterosexual copulations, or serial monogamy, while extensive numbers of nonreproducing birds that do not engage in either heterosexual or homosexual activities are also found in most species. And finally, each individual bird may participate in a variety of sexual and mating behaviors during its lifetime. Among male Ruffs, for example, some birds are exclusively heterosexual for their entire lives, some alternate between periods of heterosexual and homosexual activity or engage in both simultaneously, other individuals participate primarily in same-sex activities for most of their lives, while still others are largely asexual. Similar examples could be furnished from virtually any other animal group, especially now that detailed longitudinal studies are beginning to reveal individual (and idiosyncratic) life-history variations in nearly all organisms.

Scientists are beginning to find evidence that this diversity in social and mating systems contributes directly to the "success" of a species. For instance, among great bustards (a large, storklike bird found in southern Europe and North Africa), flexibility in heterosexual mating systems gives the birds a greater adaptability, enabling them to cope with difficult or variable ecological conditions.106 And in some species, homosexuality itself appears to be associated with environmental or social changes, in ways that are suggestive but (so far) poorly understood. Male pairing in Golden Plovers, for example, is claimed to be more prevalent in years when severe winter snowstorms have "disrupted" heterosexual pairing, while female coparenting among Grizzlies appears to be characteristic of animals living in conditions of environmental or social flux. In Ostriches, homosexual courtships may be linked to {251} unusually rainy seasons that alter the species' overall sexual and social patterns. Likewise, same-sex pairs in Ring-billed and California Gulls are more common in newly founded colonies that are experiencing rapid expansion, while homosexual activities in Rhesus and Stumptail Macaques (and a number of other primates) are often associated with changes in the composition or dynamics of the social group.107

Although the correlations between these factors need to be more systematically investigated — a linear, one-way, cause-and-effect relationship is surely not involved — they do suggest that sexual, social, and environmental variability may be closely allied. Specifically, the capacity for behavioral plasticity — including homosexuality — may strengthen the ability of a species to respond "creatively" to a highly changeable and "unpredictable" world. As primatologist G. Gray Eaton suggests, sexual versatility as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon in animals maybe directly responsible for a species' success, in ways that challenge conventional views of evolution:

The macaques' sexual behavior includes both hetero- and homosexual aspects as part of the "normal" pattern. Protocultural variations of some of these patterns have already been discussed but it is well to remember the extreme variation in behavior that characterizes individuals and groups of primates. This plasticity of behavior has apparently played a major role in the evolutionary success of primates by allowing them to adapt to a variety of social and environmental conditions ... . The variability and plasticity of the behavior ... suggests an optimistic or "maximal view of human potentialities and limitations" ... rather than a pessimistic or minimal view of man as a biological machine functioning on the basis of instinct. This minimal view based on the fang-and-claw school of Darwinism finds little support in the evidence of protocultural evolution in nonhuman primates.108

This is not to say that such plasticity always has an identifiable "function" in relation to specific environmental or social factors (even though a few such "functions" can be discerned in specific cases, as we saw in previous chapters). Behavioral versatility is best regarded as a manifestation of the larger "chaotic ordering" or nonlinearity of the world, rather than merely a response to it. A broader synergy is involved, a pattern of overall adaptability that can be realized in ways that do not necessarily entail any literal "contribution" to reproduction or any straightforward "improvement" in an animal's well-being. In other words, it is the presence of behavioral flexibility in a system that is as valuable, if not more so, than its actual concrete "usefulness" or "functionality."

Taken together, these observations — of sexual diversity, and the strength imparted by such sexual variability — lead to an important conclusion. The concept of biodiversity should be extended to include not only the genetic variety, but also the systems of social organization found within a species or ecosystem. In other words, sexual and gender systems are an essential measure of biological vitality. The more diverse patterns of social/sexual organization that a species or biological system contains — including homosexuality, transgender, and nonreproductive heterosexuality — {252} the stronger that system will be. Mating and courtship patterns are, after all, as much a part of the "complexity" of an ecosystem as the number of species it contains — and same-sex activity is an integral part of those mating and courtship systems in many animals. It stands to reason, then, that a rich mosaic of different social patterns should increase the vitality of a system, even when such patterns themselves are apparently "unproductive" or are found in only a fraction of the population.

In a rain forest that contains many hundreds of thousands of species of mammals, birds, insects, plants, and so on, the "purpose" of yet one more kind of beetle may be difficult to see — except when understood in terms of its contribution to the overall complexity and vitality of the environment. Similarly, the "function" of a particular social or sexual behavior such as homosexual courtship or heterosexual reverse mounting may seem minimal or even nonexistent at the level of a particular species or individual. But its contribution to the overall strength of the system is independent of such "utility" (or lack thereof) and is also independent of the proportion of the population that participates in it. Every individual, every behavior — whether productive or "counterproductive," comprising 1 percent or 99 percent of the population — has a part to play. Its role is not in the tapestry of life, but as the tapestry of life: its existence is its "function." Biological diversity is intrinsically valuable, and homosexuality/transgender is one reflection of that diversity.

The Extravagance of Biological Systems
      The history of life on earth is mainly the effect of a wild exuberance ...
      — GEORGES BATAILLE, "Laws of General Economy"109

      There are many points of contact between biodiversity studies, chaos science, and the new evolutionary paradigms, but one of the most significant common threads running through these three disciplines is a recognition of the profound extravagance of natural systems. Chaos physicist Joseph Ford speaks of an "exciting variety, richness of choice, a cornucopia of opportunity," in the patterning of physical systems, while fractals and "strange attractors" are described as "bizarre, infinitely tangled abstractions" with "prickly thorns ... spirals and filaments curling outward and around ... infinitely variegated."110 Edward O. Wilson, one of the premier theoreticians on biodiversity, talks about "the engine of tropical exuberance," in which "specialization is ... pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes" and where "in the fractal world, an entire ecosystem can exist in the plumage of a bird."111 Ornithologists studying the complexity of birdsong marvel that "the diversity of modes of singing amongst birds is so great that it defies explanation" and are left "to puzzle over the resulting richness and variety that evolution has created."112 Entomologists are awed by the "spectacular diversity of complex structures" in the most minute of forms, such as the sperm-reception sites of insect eggs or the "morphological exuberance," "extravagance," and "apparently superfluous complexity" of insect genitalia.113 Evolutionary theorists grapple with the enigma of "the luxuriant tail feathers of peacocks, the lion's mane, and the flashy dewlaps and throat {253} colorations of many lizards ... just a few of the extravagant ... features for which evolutionists have sought explanations ever since Darwin advanced his ideas."114

To formally recognize this "extravagance," and also to consolidate some of the converging ideas in these disciplines, we propose the concept of Biological Exuberance, after the work of noted French author and philosopher Georges Bataille.115 Bataille has presented, in his theory of General Economy, a radical revision in the way we think about the flow of energy in both natural and cultural systems (or "economies"). According to his view, excess and exuberance are primary driving forces of biological systems, as much if not more so than scarcity (competition for resources) or functionality (the "usefulness" of a particular form or behavior). Bataille's fundamental observation is that all organisms are provided with more energy than they need to stay alive — the source of this energy is, ultimately, the sun. This surplus of energy will first be used for the growth of the organism (or larger biological system), but when the system reaches its limits of growth, the excess energy must be spent, expressed in some other form, "used up," or otherwise destroyed. The typical ways that such energy is "squandered," Bataille observes, are through sexual reproduction, consumption by other organisms (eating), and death.

Life on this planet is above all characterized by what Bataille calls "the superabundance of biochemical energy" freely given to it by the sun. The challenge confronting life, then, is not scarcity, but excess — what to do with all this extra energy. Virtually all outpouring of activity, both (pro)creative and destructive — the development of baroque ornament and pattern (or its distillation into concentrated minimalism), the wanton consumption of animal and plant foods (or mass starvations in their absence), the extreme elaboration of social systems (encompassing both "complex" and "simple" forms), the florescence of new species and the extinction of others, the cycles of burgeoning and decaying biomass — all of these can be seen, ultimately, as mechanisms that "use up" or express this excess energy. According to this view, life should in fact be full of "wasteful," "extravagant," and "excessive" activities. Bataille also extends his theory to systems of human economy and social organization, including an examination of various attempts to "control" or channel this outpouring of exuberance, often by artificially creating scarcity.116 Phenomena as diverse as Aztec sacrifice and warfare, potlatch among Northwest Coast Indians, Buddhist monasticism in Tibet, and Soviet industrialization are all revealed to have unexpected properties and interconnections under this analysis.

This theory turns conventional ideas about the world on their head. In spite of its unorthodox perspective, though, it accords startlingly well with a number of observations that scientists have been making for many years (and not just the obvious ones, such as that solar energy is the driving force behind all life and movement on this planet). We have already seen that scientists in such diverse areas as chaos theory, biodiversity studies, and post-Darwinian evolution have been forced to confront the unmitigated extravagance of natural systems, in all their "splendor and squalor."117 Yet researchers who do not necessarily consider themselves to be part of these "new" streams of thought have independently come to similar conclusions. {254} This is particularly true with regard to the three "expenditures" that Bataille's theory singles out — sexual reproduction, eating, and death.

For instance, biologists have repeatedly remarked that sexual reproduction is costly, draining, dangerous, and yes, even "wasteful." This is true not only for individual animals — who are often reduced to emaciated shadows of their former selves by the end of the breeding season because of the tolls of reproduction — but for entire populations. The insect world, in particular, is famous for its extraordinary orgies of "mating" activity involving hundreds of thousands of individuals at a time, who often perish only a few hours or days after hatching — sometimes without ever mating. So striking is this "costliness" that scientists have questioned why sexual reproduction should exist at all — not all animals reproduce sexually, after all. This is often posed as the long-standing "problem" or "paradox" of sex. Sexual reproduction is generally considered to be more than twice as "expensive" (energetically as well as genetically) as asexual reproduction, because of the "inefficiency" of having each parent contribute only half of the offspring's genetic material, the lack of a male contribution to raising that offspring in many species, as well as the associated risks and energy expenditures of courtship and mating behaviors. Yet exactly this sort of "wastefulness" is expected in a pattern of Biological Exuberance.118

Biologists have also observed that eating — the consumption of one organism by another — is not a necessary component of life. Why, for example, don't all species manufacture their own food the way plants do? In fact, compared to the efficiency (and self-sufficiency) of photosynthesis, much more energy is "squandered" when one animal consumes another or consumes plant material. In nature, death itself seems to be elevated to "lavish" proportions, often reaching a "profusion" of its own. Hundreds of baby turtles, after hours of struggling to break through their eggshells, finally reach the sea, only to be picked off by the waiting jaws and beaks of predators — just one of countless examples throughout nature. This "squandering" of life hasn't escaped the attention of biologists, who usually speak of it in terms of the inexorable mechanics of the food chain — otherwise known as the "cruelty" of nature. Yet it, too, is part of an overall pattern of abundance or excess.

In addition to making scientific sense, the concept of Biological Exuberance also makes common sense — it is intuitively accessible. We can all think of examples of the "extravagance" of nature in our own lives — maybe it's the overwhelming lushness and beauty of the plants in our garden, the endlessly varied patterns of snowflakes or frost on our window, the infinite and subtle hues of autumn leaves — or perhaps simply our dog or cat, one of many hundreds of different breeds and hybrids. The examples multiply when we turn our attentions to other areas of the natural world, or to human society. Appreciation of the diversity and "exuberance" of life is, of course, nothing new — scientists and artists alike have sung its praises throughout history. The brilliance of Bataille's work lies not so much in his recognition of this concept, but in the importance he accords it. Conventional thinking regards the diversity and extravagance of life as the result or by-product of other, greater forces — evolution, the laws of physics, the progression of history, and so on. {255} For Bataille, this relation is reversed: exuberance is the source and essence of life, from which all other patterns flow.

Most importantly, the concept of Biological Exuberance sheds new light on the phenomenon of homosexuality. If, as Bataille suggests, life is characterized by what appear to be "wasteful" activities, then what could be more "wasteful" than homosexuality and nonprocreative heterosexuality (and gender systems)? If sexual reproduction itself is a means of using up excess biochemical energy, then obviously sexual or social activity that does not itself lead to reproduction will be an even greater "squandering" of such energy.119 Homosexuality/transgender is simply one of the many expressions of the natural intensity or "exuberance" of biological systems. Contrary to what we have all been taught in high school, reproduction is not the ultimate "purpose" or inevitable outcome of biology. It is simply one consequence of a much larger pattern of energy "expenditure," in which the overriding force is the need to use up excess. In the process, many organisms end up passing on their genes, but just as many lead lives in which reproduction figures scarcely at all. Earth's profusion simply will not be "contained" within procreation: it wells up and spills over and beyond this ... . Lives of intense briefness or sustained incandescence — whether procreative or just creative — each is fueled by the generosity of existence. The equation of life turns on both prodigious fecundity and fruitless prodigality.

Returning to the Source: Indigenous Cosmologies and Fractal Sexualities
      The Ufaina believe in a vital force called fufaka which is ... present in all living beings. This vital force, whose source is the sun, is constantly recycled among plants, animals, men, and the Earth itself ... . When a being dies it releases this energy ... similarly when a living thing consumes another ... . The sun revolves around the cosmos distributing energy to all equally.
      — MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND, "An Amazonian Tribe's View of Cosmology"120

      Solar energy is the source of life's exuberant development.
      — GEORGES BATAILLE, "Laws of General Economy"121

The concept of Biological Exuberance encapsulates a number of converging lines of thought in a wide range of scientific disciplines. In essence, it is a new way of looking at the world — but in a sense, it is not new at all. This "modern" worldview is uncannily similar to the perspectives of indigenous peoples around the globe, whose ancient "cosmologies" often bear striking resemblances to the most sophisticated recent theories of particle physics or deep ecology. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the intersection of chaos science, post-Darwinian evolution, and biodiversity /Gaia theory is its potential to initiate a return to indigenous sources of knowledge.
{256}
A number of scientists in each of these "new" scientific disciplines are starting to acknowledge the teachings of aboriginal cultures. Some of the most prominent and respected researchers in biodiversity studies, chaos theory, and the new evolutionary paradigms are waking up to the fact that their innovative ideas are echoed in aboriginal belief systems around the world. For instance, Edward O. Wilson invokes the visionary insights of indigenous Amazonian shamans, as well as the classificatory expertise of native New Guineans, to illustrate the biodiversity and "exuberance of tropical rain-forest life."122 Pioneering chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham recognizes that ancient and tribal cultures are cut through with "chaotic" patterns, such as the "fractal architecture" of the indigenous peoples of Mali.123 There is even serious discussion among respected scientists of "respiritualizing" our relationship with nature and looking to indigenous cultures for guidance, faced as we are with the global destruction of ecosystems and massive losses in species diversity. 124 Indigenous knowledge of natural history among the Inupiaq (Eskimo) and Koyukon people of Alaska, the O'odham and Yaqui people of the Southwest, and the Fore and various other New Guinean tribes is offered as a model for Western scientists addressing biodiversity issues.125 The indigenous concept of an animal's "spirit" is embraced by wildlife biologist Douglas Chadwick, who suggests that a view of animals as "beings with languages and elaborate societies of their own" and perhaps even "some shared quality of consciousness" is useful for an integrated scientific understanding of their behavior and role in the ecosystem. Renowned conservation biologists such as Michael E. Soule and R. Edward Grumbine also point to Native American spirituality — such as the shamanic Bear ceremonialism of many First Nations (including the Bear Mother myth) — as an important part of the solution to our current biodiversity crisis.126

Gaian and post-Darwinian evolutionary theorists such as Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith are also calling for a return to indigenous worldviews as a way of understanding the nonlinear complexities of nature.127 Many of these aboriginal cosmologies, like that of the Amazonian Ufaina people referred to above, involve sophisticated conceptualizations of the flow of "life energy" that parallel contemporary environmental and economic theories, including Bataille's theory of General Economy. Others are in accordance with some of the basic tenets of chaos and Gaia theory in recognizing the importance of "exceptional," statistically rare, or apparently paradoxical phenomena. Frank LaPena, a traditional poet and artist of the Wintu tribe as well as a native anthropologist, succinctly captures this perspective, which is simultaneously ancient and modern: "The earth is alive and exists as a series of interconnected systems where contradictions as well as confirmations are valid expressions of wholeness."128

One of the most powerful symbols of scientists' newfound willingness to listen to indigenous sources took place at the National Forum on BioDiversity in 1986. Organized by the National Academy of Sciences and held at the Smithsonian Institution, this prestigious conference brought together more than 60 distinguished scholars and scientists from around the world. Their task: to discuss the importance of biodiversity as we approach the twenty-first century. One of the most eagerly anticipated speakers was neither a "scholar" nor a "scientist" in the {257} conventional sense. Native American storyteller Larry Littlebird, a member of the Keres nations of New Mexico, was invited to give an indigenous perspective on the natural world. As the audience sat in hushed attention on the final day of the conference, Littlebird treated the biologists to an enigmatic tale of Lizard, who summons forth rain clouds with a song that most ordinary humans can't hear.129

Although this unprecedented event is an encouraging sign of a new direction in science, something crucial was missing — the centrality of homosexuality/transgender to indigenous belief systems. How many of the participants at that conference knew that Littlebird's Pueblo tribe, one of the Keresan peoples, recognizes the sacredness of the two-spirit or kokwimu (man-woman), and honors homosexuality and transgender in both humans and animals? How many of them realized that the Keresan cosmology includes one of the most noteworthy examples of the left-handed, gender-mixing Bear figure?130 Or that the "Lizard" of Littlebird's story was most likely a Whiptail Lizard, one of several all-female species of the American Southwest that reproduce by parthenogenesis and engage in lesbian copulation?131 How many of them knew that some of the animals mentioned in Littlebird's closing words, "The deer, eagle, and butterfly dancers are coming ... ," exhibit homosexuality and transgender in nature? The answer, unfortunately, is that probably no one in the audience was aware of these connections.

A contemporary Yup'ik two-spirit, Anguksuar (Richard LaFortune), has drawn attention to the recent convergence of Western scientific thought with indigenous perspectives, and the relevance of notions of gender and sexual fluidity: "Modern science emerged [and] linear flight from disorder led directly to quantum theory. This scrambling toward something orderly and manageable has landed right back in the lap of the Great Mystery: chaos, the unknown, and imagination ... . This is a region of the cosmos familiar to many indigenous taxonomies and to which the Western mind is finally returning ... . When I read [Fritjof] Capra's description of the 'Crisis of Perception' that appears to be afflicting Western societies, it seemed to make perfect sense that culture, identity, gender, and human sexuality would figure prominently in such a crisis."132 The fact is that two-spiritedness, homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender are at the forefront of some of the most significant scientific re-visionings of our time — in which the gap between indigenous and Western perspectives is finally being bridged — yet their contribution is rarely, if ever, acknowledged by Western scientists. When prominent chaos theoreticians, biodiversity experts, and post-Darwinian evolutionists invoke the teachings of tribal peoples, they are usually unaware of the pivotal role played by homosexuality and transgender in these indigenous belief systems, or in the lives of the writers, storytellers, and visionaries who give poetic voice to their scientific concepts.

In the book Evolution Extended, for instance — a recent presentation of innovative scientific and philosophical interpretations of evolutionary theory — the words of Native American poet Joy Harjo are featured prominently as a haunting invocation of life's interconnectedness.133 Of Muscogee Creek heritage, Harjo has received wide acclaim for her writing, which draws heavily on her indigenous roots and often includes powerful images of the natural world, while also juxtaposing references to specific constructs of Western science such as quantum physics or {258} molecular structures. Harjo is also a "lover of women" whose writing has been anthologized in Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time. She acknowledges lesbian or bisexual authors such as Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Alice Walker, Beth Brant, and Adrienne Rich, as well as the ideas of lesbian-feminism, as primary influences on her work. She has spoken of the importance of eroticism permeating all aspects of life, and she affirms the power of androgyny and the presence of male and female traits in every individual.134 Yet these aspects of Harjo's life and work are considered incidental or irrelevant to the perspective she brings to the scientific material — not even worth mentioning as one component of her personal vision, let alone a key feature in the bringing together of seemingly disparate worlds that she achieves through her poetry.

"From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things — the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals — and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery." So spoke the Oglala (Sioux) chief Luther Standing Bear, whose words grace the pages of Buffalo Nation, a recent book by prominent wildlife biologist Valerius Geist. This vision of the life energy connecting the "buffalo nation" (and all of nature) to the "human nation" underscores the parallel that Geist draws between indigenous and contemporary scientific approaches to wildlife conservation. The sophisticated game-management practices developed by many Native Americans — both traditionally and in their current efforts to resurrect Buffalo herds on their lands — are, according to Geist, at the forefront of recent Bison conservation efforts. Beautifully interwoven through his discussion of this species' natural history, behavior, and preservation are evocations of the powerful spiritual role played by the Bison in Native American cultures, including descriptions of Mandan Buffalo Dances and the Lakota legend of the White Buffalo Woman. Yet nowhere in this discussion is there any mention of indigenous views on sexual and gender variability in Bison (or humans), let alone of contemporary scientific findings on these topics. Ironically, though, the book still manages to unintentionally present a vivid picture — literally — of Bison homosexuality. In the section on rutting behavior, a photograph of Buffalo mating activity is identified as a bull mounting a female, when in fact it depicts a bull mounting another bull.135 In the end, then, perhaps the animals themselves will have the "final say," insuring the representation of homosexuality /transgender and its rightful place in both indigenous and Western scientific thinking.

The importance of this missing link cannot be overemphasized. If Western science is to embrace indigenous perspectives — as it should — then it must do so fully, including views on homosexuality/transgender. It cannot pick and choose among aboriginal "beliefs," salvaging only those that it is most comfortable with while rejecting those that challenge its prejudices. All of us (scientists included) must acknowledge that heeding "aboriginal wisdom" means listening even when — or perhaps, especially when — we aren't prepared to hear what it has to say about sexual and gender variance. For too long, native views have been sanitized to make them palatable to nonindigenous people. In a world where Native American spirituality {259} is co-opted to sell bottled water — indeed, is sold directly as a "New Age" commodity — it has become something of a cliche to speak of the environmental "balance" and "harmony" of indigenous cultures.136 The reality is that homosexuality and transgender — along with many other beliefs and practices that would probably be considered objectionable by large numbers of people — are usually an integral, if not a central, component of such "balance." Consider the cosmology of the Bedamini people of New Guinea, which seems to turn conventional ideas about the natural world upside down:

      «It is believed that homosexual activities promote growth throughout nature ... while excessive heterosexual activities lead to decay in nature ... . The balance of these forces is dependent on human action ... . The Bedamini do not ... experience any inconsistency in the cosmic equation of homosexuality with growth and heterosexuality with decay.»
      — ARVE SORUM, "Growth and Decay: Bedamini Notions of Sexuality"137

Nor is the association of homosexuality with fecundity unique to this example. As we saw earlier, the renewal and abundance of nature is ensured during Mandan, Yup'ik, and many other cultures' ceremonies by the symbolic reenactment of animal homosexuality and ritual displays of gender mixing. The Bimin-Kuskusmin human-animal androgynes (who are themselves celibate or postreproductive) are seen as embodiments of fertility, life essence, and earth's creative powers, while the presence of transgendered and nonreproductive animals is regarded as vital for the productivity of domesticated herds among the Navajo and Chukchi. Rather than being seen as "barren" or counterproductive, then, homosexuality, transgender, and nonbreeding are considered essential for the continuity of life. This is the fundamental "paradox" at the heart of indigenous thinking on alternate genders and sexualities — something that is not, of course, really considered paradoxical at all in these worldviews. It is important that scientists working in chaos theory, biodiversity /Gaia studies, and post-Darwinian evolution acknowledge their genuine affinities with indigenous perspectives. But this process will be complete only when scientists themselves understand this "paradox" and no longer see any inconsistency in the equation of homosexuality/transgender with the vitality of the natural world.

In his study of the 12,000-year-old shamanic worldview of the Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) people and their ancestors, anthropologist Karl Schlesier makes explicit the concordance between ancient and modern perspectives, and the essence of sexual and gender variability that is at its core. According to Schlesier, "The new scientific paradigm initiated by physics and astronomy during the last decades has not only overthrown the rationalistic description that has dominated science for merely four centuries, but is testing concepts regarded as factual in the Tsistsistas world description. The Tsistsistas world description understands power ('energy') in the universe ... as cosmic power" — a power that controls quantum phenomena and exhibits paradoxical properties, including being both local and nonlocal, {260} causal and noncausal (among others). Central to this understanding is the figure of the gender-mixing or two-spirit shaman, the "halfman-halfwoman" who is a living exemplar of the reconciliation of contraries, a "traveler in the androgynal quest" uniting within him/herself apparently contradictory categories. This conjunction of opposites is seen as a return to the original and timeless state of all matter — the primordial mystery of totality. Homosexuality/transgender is therefore regarded as a hierophany, a manifestation of this sacred oneness and plentitude. "This organic Tsistsistas world description, in which all parts of the universe were interrelated, saw life as wondrous ... . This is perhaps the greatest achievement of shamanism since its development: ... to interpret the world with all its manifestations as a place of miracles, transformations, and immortality."138

On the eve of the twenty-first century, human beings have begun to reimagine and reconfigure some of the most fundamental aspects of nature and culture. Stepping into a social and biological landscape that could scarcely have been imagined a few decades ago, homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people are now offering new paradigms of sexuality and gender for all of us to consider. As part of this process, they are looking simultaneously to indigenous and futuristic sources of inspiration:

      «In the search for new vocabularies and labels, terms like shapeshifter and morphing have come to be used to refer to gender identity and sexual style presentations and their fluidity. Shapeshifter, originally from Native American culture, was introduced into current popular culture from science fiction, especially a new offshoot of the cyberpunk subgenre made famous by William Gibson and exemplified by the work of Octavia E. Butler, the African-American author of the Xenogenesis series. Butler's books are inhabited by genetics-manipulating aliens, a polygendered species whose sexuality is multifarious and who are "impelled to metamorphosis," whose survival in fact depends upon their "morphological change, genetic diversity and adaptations."»
      — ZACHARY I. NATAF, "The Future: The Postmodern Lesbian Body and Transgender Trouble"139

Ironically, one need not look into the future or on "alien worlds" to find appropriate models: shape-shifting and morphing creatures are not merely the stuff of fantasy. The animal world — right now, here on earth — is brimming with countless gender variations and shimmering sexual possibilities: entire lizard species that consist only of females who reproduce by virgin birth and also have sex with each other; or the multigendered society of the Ruff, with four distinct categories of male birds, some of whom court and mate with one another; or female Spotted Hyenas and Bears who copulate and give birth through their "penile" clitorides, and male Greater Rheas who possess "vaginal" phalluses (like the females of their species) and raise young in two-father families; or the vibrant transsexualities of coral reef fish, and the dazzling intersexualities of gynandromorphs and chimeras. In their quest for "postmodern" patterns of gender and sexuality, human beings are simply catching up {261} with the species that have preceded us in evolving sexual and gender diversity — and the aboriginal cultures that have long recognized this. The very melding of indigenous cosmologies and fractal sexualities suggested in the passage above is already well under way — but within the realm of science fact, not fiction.

The Magnificent Overabundance of Reality

It is early morning in the mountains of Sierra Chincua in central Mexico. Covered with what appear to be the golden and orange leaves of autumn, the forest is aquiver, "her trillion secrets touchably alive"140 — but these are not leaves, nor is it autumn. The sound of a distant waterfall fills the air — but no cascading rapids are nearby. It is the fluttering of hundreds of thousands of paper-thin wings — for this is the overwintering site of Monarch Butterflies, resting after their epic migration across North America. They cling to the trees in such numbers that the branches are bent toward the ground, and the forest floor is carpeted with their densely packed bodies. Some of the butterflies are in tandem, since mating often takes place at these overwintering sites. And some of this mating is homosexual: one study of an overwintering site revealed that at the peak of mating activity, more than 10 percent of the Monarch pairs were composed of two males, while later in the season, this percentage rose to nearly 50 percent.141 When the Monarchs take to the air en masse, they form a thick orange cloud that engulfs the trees and requires thirty minutes to pass. Seen from above, their multitude is staggering: the forest seems to be on fire, burning with millions of tiny butterfly-flames. This image is a powerful evocation of the central theme of Biological Exuberance: the glorious multiplicity and bounty of life, what author Hakim Bey has called "the magnificent overabundance of reality."142

We conclude this section with a reflection on where this journey through the speculations of post-Darwinian evolution, chaos theory, and biodiversity studies has led us — a journey along circuitous routes, following clues that at times seemed far-flung, straying down paths that never quite lost us (in spite of their tangential meanderings). Our final resting spot — the concept of Biological Exuberance — lies somewhere along the trajectory defined by these three points (chaos, biodiversity, evolution), although its exact location remains strangely imprecise.143 Seen in the light of Biological Exuberance, animal homosexuality/transgender and other nonreproductive behaviors finally "make sense" — they find an intuitive connection to a larger pattern. Yet they are still, paradoxically, "inexplicable," since they continue to elude conventional definitions of usefulness. Nothing, in the end, has really been "explained" — and rightly so, for it was "sensible explanations" that ran aground in the first place.

Nevertheless, by looking at one particular aspect of animal behavior, we have actually stumbled upon something much larger — a new way of seeing the world, of perceiving broader patterns in nature and human society. Animal homosexuality and transgender may appear far removed from our everyday lives, but through these phenomena, we also arrive at an understanding and appreciation of some of the simplest, most ordinary things around us. Biological Exuberance is available, if {262} it is nothing else — at our fingertips, everywhere we turn, in the fibers and textures that surround us, in the spices that fill our nostrils as we walk past the corner store, in the cloud formations above us and the dandelion seeds strewn by the wind about us, in the embrace of a friend and the kiss of a beloved — in all the colors and patterns and sensations that fill our lives. How many of us haven't, at one time or another, been overcome by this variety, this feeling of what poet Louis MacNeice describes as "the drunkenness of things being various," the world as "incorrigibly plural"?144 Biological Exuberance simply takes our intuitive understanding of the diversity of life and makes it the essence of existence. We needn't be living in material wealth or in an isolated wilderness to experience this lavishness, either. The weeds struggling through a sidewalk crack or choking an abandoned urban plot are every bit as sumptuous as the most refined of rose gardens, the most magnificent of mountain forests — if not more so. Gifted with this heightened understanding, we can now find the intoxication contained in a glass of water, where before even the most sophisticated wine seemed flavorless (to paraphrase Hakim Bey).145

Ultimately, the synthesis of scientific views represented by Biological Exuberance brings us full circle — back to a way of looking at the world that is in accordance with some of the most ancient indigenous conceptions of animal (and human) sexual and gender variability. This perspective dissolves binary oppositions, uniting dualities while simultaneously cherishing unlikeness. It suffers difference, honoring the "anomalous" and the "irregular" without reducing them to something familiar or "manageable." And it embraces paradox, recognizing the coexistence of contradictory and seemingly incompatible phenomena. It is about the unspeakable inexplicability of earth's mysteries — which are as immediate as the next heartbeat. Biological Exuberance is, above all, an affirmation of life's vitality and infinite possibilities: a worldview that is at once primordial and futuristic, in which gender is kaleidoscopic, sexualities are multiple, and the categories of male and female are fluid and transmutable. A world, in short, exactly like the one we inhabit.
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