Primates’ same-sex sexuality 'reinforces bonds amid stress'

Same-sex sexual behaviour among nonhuman primates may arise as a way to reinforce bonds and keep societies together in the face of environmental or social challenges, researchers have suggested.

- Nicola Davis Science correspondent

Prof Vincent Savolainen, a coauthor of a paper from Imperial College London, added that while the work focused on our living evolutionary cousins, early human species probably experienced similar challenges, raising the possibility that they, too, showed such behaviour.

“There were many different species that unfortunately [are] all gone, that must have done this same thing as we see in apes, for example,” Savolainen said.