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A newly-published article on the neurological manipulation of fruit flies has hit the presses. University of Illinois research David Featherstone mutated a gene on fruit fly DNA that basically created bisexual fruit flies. Oddly, most of the press tag these "homosexual" fruit flies, but that isn't the case at all.
In med-speak:
"Here, we show that the glial amino-acid transporter genderblind controls whether Drosophila melanogaster males will attempt to mate with other males. Genderblind (gb) mutant males showed no alteration in heterosexual courtship or copulation, but were attracted to normally unappealing male species-specific chemosensory cues. As a result, genderblind mutant males courted and attempted to copulate with other Drosophila males."
Translation:
Altering a specific gene so that fruit flies don't really care if it's male or female pheremones they react to, male fruit flies will attempt to mate with, to borrow a tongue-in-cheek phrase, any fruit fly that moves.
True or false:
left-handedness is correlated with sexual orientation.
Birth order in males is correlated with sexual orientation but not in females.
Bisexuals report higher rates of being ambidextrous than homosexuals or heterosexuals.
All quite true (see citations, below).
Neurological and psychological research is finding a lot of interesting correlations between biology and sexuality. The research is fascinating, validating and sometimes a little disturbing. Validating in that the evidence is certainly out there that our sexual urges are at least in part biological in origin. Disturbing because, in at least one citation I read, the language is loaded toward "heterosexual=normative; homosexual=deviation."
