Natural & Animal Sexuality, Sexuality & Gender

From “The Smell of the Sheep”, a Lesson in Sexuality.

When Pope Francis spoke of the “Smell of the Sheep”, the usage was metaphorical - his expectation that bishops, as shepherds, should have on them evidence of having mixed at close quarters with their people - the sheep. When Gilles Herrada, in “The Missing Myth“, writes about the smell of the sheep and what we can learn from it about sexuality, his usage is literal - specifically, the sexual arousal of sheep (and also humans) in response to pheremones.

Herrada has strong academic credentials as a scientist, specifically in the fields of neuroscience and reproductive biology, so it is no surprise that in his multidisciplinary approach to the subject of homosexuality, he presents the information and lessons that we can draw from science with particular precision and clarity. The chapters on science (the “What”, or the “Truth” of homosexuality) take up the first of the book’s three main divisions. In one section, he presents an impressive array of evidence from science that gay men in some respects, are physiologically different from heterosexual men, and vice versa for women. Numerous studies have demonstrated that statistical differences can be seen in such diverse characteristics as the ratio of finger length between the 2nd and 4th fingers, fingerprint patterns, sound emissions in the inner ear, and patterns of skeletal growth.

The most impressive evidence comes from brain studies. A particular region of the hypothalamus is notably larger in men than in women - and also notably larger in heterosexual men than in homosexual men. Scanning studies of the brain have shown that different areas of the brain light up when exposed to erotic images. Straight men respond to straight - oriented erotica, gay me to gay erotica. (No surprise there). The brain studies also show that straight men and gay men respond differently to certain kinds of smell - specifically, to the pheromones that are secreted by the body, and act as triggers to sexual arousal. One study used PET scanning (positron emission tomography) to assess responses to two specific pheromones, one male and one female:

They found that the hypothalamus of both heterosexual women and homosexual men lights up when exposed to the male pheromone, but not the female one. They observed the opposite pattern with heterosexual men and lesbian women, who responded to the female chemical but not the male one.

- The Missing Myth, p38



style=”display:inline-block;width:468px;height:60px”
data-ad-client=”ca-pub-8353900896734511″
data-ad-slot=”0491842418″>

So, gay men respond differently to sexual stimuli, either visual or olfactory, to straight men, and lesbian responses differ from straight women. But there’s a catch: are these differences inherent, or learned? That’s where sheep studies come in.

Herrada notes that just as in humans, (female) sheep and rams display a similar difference in the hypothalamus. He also notes that sheep also show sexual diversity: about 6% to 8% of rams show a consistent preference for other males, and can in effect be considered “exclusively homosexual”. (That percentage is similar to an official government estimate for UK men, 6%). Research with sheep can do something that for moral reasons, cannot possibly be replicated with humans:

The same team was able to demonstrate that the hypothalamic sexual dimorphism occurs in the last month of gestation. That means that this sexual dimorphism is not the result of experience, but instead of a genetic program…

 If in rams, then very likely, in humans too. Flatearthers may insist that sexual orientation is a choice, but there is abundant research to point in the opposite direction. From the perspective of science and empirical evidence, it really does seem that indeed, we are “Born this way”.

Related, recommended books

Related articles
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Leave a Reply