National Marine Aquarium and queer animals

[GreenFootstool]

Sorry for the Facebook link but I don't think they posted this anywhere else.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14kiqpBAdMg/

In short: queer National Marine Aquarium staff have described their favourite queer animals for pride month! 🎉

Enter:

• clown fish who can change from male to female
• gay nurse sharks
• hermaphrodite wrasse who can change from female to male
• hermaphrodite starfish who are both male and female

Posted it 7hrs ago and not a single comment despite 155k followers 🤔.

The NMA have a very close relationship with Plymouth University, still a Stonewall champion.
Funnily enough DS went to NMA on a school trip last week. He didn't notice any extreme Pride stuff, but he may have become trans blind from the large display at his school.

Sorry but what nonsense. Animals certainly display homosexual behaviours and you can debate whether there is such a thing as fully homosexual animals but the queer stuff is bs in my opinion.

Apparently snails are also hermaphroditic. Fun fact - snails without their shells are a bit sluggish.
I always considered nature to be impressive and fascinating, I've never considered it queer, doesn't really do it justice.

To me it smacks of "but what about people with DSDs" nonsense by TRAs.

I'm disappointed to see such a respected organisation spouting such claptrap.

The biological ability of a few species to change sex in specific situations is not relevant to being "queer".

That's hilarious!

How about blanket octopus, where the males are 2cm and females are 2m who can rip the tentacles off jellyfish and use them to stun fish prey.

Or Anglerfish, where the tiny males sink themselves into the side of the larger females and dissolve until the they are just sacs of sperm to be used at the females' convenience.

Some birds and reptiles that can give birth in the absence of males but always to male offspring. Bit of a hail Mary if they find themselves without a mate. Wild turkeys are know to do this but the males produced are a bit shit, prone to diseases.

The thing is, none of the marine animals changing sex is queer, is it? It's all perfectly normal for those animals and they can all do it. They aren't a special little group of people who have to band together in solidarity because they feel so misunderstood.

These animals are just exhibiting their normal behaviour that is common to almost all of them. Their same-sex mating behaviour or change to another sex isn't a preference or characteristic that sets them apart from the rest of their species.

(And in the case of the "gay" nurse shark - that's pretty awful. Male nurse sharks in aquariums mate with other males because of the lack of female nurse sharks and the inability to swim off and find a female. Put enough female nurse sharks in there and it'll be a very different kettle of fish)

Irrelevant to thread but speaking of sharks, I learned yesterday that they are the only fish who have eyelids. How cool is that?

Evidence of how far Pride has fallen from its lesbian and gay roots:
the total irrelevance to lesbian and gay people of examples of animals changing sex.

We don't care about changing sex. We don't want to change sex. We are very fond of our own sex, thank you.

And anyway, most of us know that humans can't change sex, even the ones who would like to. Which is not lesbians and gays.

Capisce, queer National Marine Aquarium staff?
You may have intended it as just a bit of fun, but it's not, the whole clownfish-as-trans-icon thing was silly back then and is tiresome now🙄

I actually don't mind any of this. Learning that what seems universal through the human lens is just a fraction of nature's variety is a good thing.

As long as we all remember that whatever sex fluidity exists for other species, for humans nothing a male person thinks, feels or says makes him closer to being female than any other male person is.

While I’m aware there are animals that display behaviour we might view as similar to “gay” it’s just anthropomorphising to suggest that there are gay or trans animals in the way that there are people.

Im even aware of the two male penguins that pair bonded and even raised a chick from an abandoned egg - but this just cannot be compared to humans. It’s nowhere near as complex.

It’s absolutely fascinating to learn about and demonstrates it as a natural behaviour seen in many species but not comparable to a person being gay or in particular using the example of clownfish or wrasse and trying to link it to trans people is beyond ridiculous.

Animals have been known to form pair or mating bonds with inanimate objects too but I don’t see that being celebrated.

Humans cannot naturally change sex like an clownfish - artificial hormones and surgery do not cause any change in biological sex.

The wrasse are naturally fully hermaphrodite which does not exist in humans. It is in no way comparable to DSDs as it is a species wide characteristic not an accident during development and usually results in the person being sterile.

Have they not put anything in about the Sygnathidae family, that include pipefish, seahorses and sea dragons? The females lay the eggs into brood pouches on the males (of varying levels of sophistication). The males incubate the eggs and eventually give birth to live young.

If they didn't, they missed a trick there.