Why am i gay biology
In a statement, the study authors report: “Because SSB confers no immediately obvious direct reproductive or survival benefit and can divert mating effort away from reproductive opportunities, its widespread occurrence across the animal kingdom and human cultures raise questions for evolutionary biology.” Their study was published in Nature Human Behavior. Genes and sexual behavior - First author Brendan Zietsch, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, and colleagues attempted to discover why the genes associated with same-sex sexual behavior continue to flourish. There are inherent dangers in focusing on genetics in relation to sexual orientation.The same cluster of genes that may be associated with same-sex sexual behavior may confer some evolutionary advantage.Our own sexual orientation may be much more fluid than we thought.Two new studies published Monday, one in Nature Human Behavior and the other in Scientific Reports, further illuminate the complexities of sexual orientation and how fraught scientific study of the subject is. Instead of just one gene (or one marker on one gene) that determines sexual orientation, there are many genes with markers related to attraction to the same sex.įor example, in 2019, the researchers studying those markers and same-sex attraction told Inverse: “This finding suggests that on a genetic level, there is no single dimension from opposite-sex to same-sex preference.” It theoretically stands to reason there might be genetic underpinnings to who we become sexually attracted to.īut more recent research has both confirmed and debunked the notion of a genetic basis for sexual orientation. It makes sense: Our genes can influence who we are, and psychologists contend sexual orientation is not a conscious choice. Over the past two decades, many researchers have become focused on the notion of a “gay gene” - biological proof that one was “born this way.” There’s nothing new about being gay, but that hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to understand it.