Asexuality in animals

[Giorgio]

Hey! I was wondering, are there any study about asexuality in wild animals? I mean mostly mammals, i know there are some insects for exemple that are asexual, but they 're born to be like that so and it's a different topic. That could be very interesting.

[Slice of Ace]

You piqued my curiosity, and I found this: http://www.kristinagupta.com/2014/01/09/asexuality-in-non-human-animals/

I haven't read it all yet, but it looks like there are some examples of asexuality (the orientation 😅) in mammals

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

My crofter neighbour on Skye had a ram that showed no interest in ewes or other rams....he had to sell the poor thing onwards! I posted this on aven before, but it's only an anecdotal account.

[Giorgio]

41 minutes ago, Slice of Ace said:

 http://www.kristinagupta.com/2014/01/09/asexuality-in-non-human-animals/

Thank you, this is well done! It says that between 12 and 18 per cents of rams are asexual, that's quite a lot. It makes me wonder if also in human the percentage is actualy higher, but we just don't realize it due to cultural factors. It must be interesting to go deeply in these researches.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

PS... The photo of the ram in the article is actually a ewe!😆

[MoraDollie]

If you're interested in anecdotal evidence: I had a female betta fish who I tried to breed and I swear to God she was either an "angry lesbian" or asexual because she did NOT want to mate with the any male bettas I tried presenting to her and she chased them angerily around the tank, no matter what set up I tried with her. Oddly she did perfectly fine with community fish that weren't bettas. 

[everywhere and nowhere]

1 hour ago, Giorgio said:

Thank you, this is well done! It says that between 12 and 18 per cents of rams are asexual, that's quite a lot. It makes me wonder if also in human the percentage is actualy higher, but we just don't realize it due to cultural factors. It must be interesting to go deeply in these researches.

I highly suspect it. A few resources which may support such an opinion:

 

1. A blog entry I have akready linked to several times: How many asexuals are there?

The author analyses availablem data. from modern studies on asexuality specifically to Kinsey's research, and shows how percentage of "asexual" or "likely asexual" people varies widely in different studies and different demographics. A quote I consider very insightful (emphasis mine):

Quote

In coming up with the questions for this quiz [Asexual Identification Scale], they compared the 176 asexual participants to 716 non-ace participants, recruited off of Craigslist / psychology research websites / their university study pool. Of those, 4% scored above 40.

This could be read as the false positive of the test. I would like to offer a counter proposal: This is closer to the baseline rate of asexuality in the general population.

The author's conclusion:

Quote

I feel pretty comfortable saying that 1-8% of the population is asexual, maybe closer to 4-8%.

2. A little comment to an entry about asexuality on a sexologist's blog: Living Happily Ever After, and Never, Ever Having Sex

Comment by a reader from Finland:

Quote

0.5%? 1.0%? No way (...)

"So it appears that somewhere between 0.5 and 1 percent of the population—one person in 100 to 200—may consider themselves to be asexual."

Lots of more than that are asexual. As far as I know, 5% to 6% of people are asexual. In 2013, a survey was made in Finland that shows that 6%, of the 1,619 Finnish youngsters that responded, consider themselves to be asexual: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aseksuaalisuus#cite_note-alanko-8

Note that this was a survey done on young people, who are more likely to have heard of asexuality - and suddenly the percentage is six times higher than the one commonly quoted and re-quoted everywhere on the web.

3. An article on Pink News I have linked recently: Asexuality: Some people just don’t want to have sex

It goes further than typical "Introduction to Asexuality"-type articles, is more critical of how modern ideas of "sexual freedom" forget and neglect the need for a freedom not to have sex... And it also includes some quotes which could be used to support one's views by those who believe that the commonly given number of asexuals is underestimated:

Quote

Less than 1% – around 70 people [in the Sex in Australia survey] – said they’d never felt sexually attracted to anyone, but this number is probably higher in the real population.

Some people who suspect they might be confronted with questions about their sexuality and feel uncomfortable answering them might refuse to take part in such surveys.

Even in the best random-sample population surveys, on any topic, one in every three or four eligible people refuses to participate.

We know the people who refuse sex surveys are not the same as those who take part. Refusers are likely to be less sexually liberal in their attitudes and also younger.

Thus many sexually inactive people, especially virgins, are probably missing from sexual behaviour surveys.

For a start, in Sex in Australia, 99% of people over 30 say they have had intercourse. This is surprisingly high when you think about lifelong singles, including some disabled people, nuns and priests. (...)

Even among people in male–female regular sexual relationships, the Sex in Australia survey showed about one person in six had not had sex in the past four weeks.

Asked: “During the last year, has there been a period of one month or more when you lacked interest in having sex?”, about a quarter of all men and half of all women said yes. This is much the same in Britain and the United States.

But, somehow, the question itself sets up the expectation that not feeling like having sex is a failing or problem, especially as it’s followed by other questions about things that really sound like problems, such as painful intercourse and trouble keeping an erection.

 

[Carmine88]

It's an interesting thought but would be hard to measure. Animals not being able to talk and all can't tell us the reason they don't mate. So many different reasons they might not and that's without considering that different species will all be very different in circumstances. Measuring the lack of something is harder than measuring presence too. I expect at least some are though but I expect the numbers differ by species. Animals is too general lol, there are some fish that change gender and lizards that produce offspring with only themselves, the world is so vast. We barely know anything about some animals.

[Samantha McAllister]

I have a young short-finned red male betta that has built a bubble nest and reproduced on his own. He is now caring for his own clutch of eggs which he laid in a bubble nest he also created. He has never been ever exposed to any other bettas so spawning never occurred. It is confirmed, although extremely rare some betta fish are asexual and can reproduce without I mate. 

[DarkStormyKnight]

I might be remembering the study mentioned above, but there was a study ages ago that saw asexuality in sheep (as in sheep with no interest in mating with anyone).

[Karst]

Homosexuality has also been observed in hundreds of species by zoologists.  In just about every animal that forms pair bonds, some of them are between individuals of the same sex. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

 

There are also lizards that can produce through parthenogenesis.  These species consist only of females.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teiidae

 

[crazy ace]

On 9/4/2019 at 3:38 AM, Samantha McAllister said:

some betta fish are asexual and can reproduce without a mate. 

I think they mean the sexual orientation, not the ability to reproduce on one's own. (For example, I'm asexual, but when I cut off a finger, I don't reproduce.)