How Queer Ecology Reveals the Diversity of Nature and Human Experience

Tundra Swans in lower Columbia River, off Svenson Island, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Nature is astonishingly diverse. Across the planet’s oceans, forests, grasslands, and cities, living beings interact in ways that defy rigid expectations. Yet when it comes to discussing queer behaviors in the natural world, we often hear only a handful of familiar examples: same-sex penguin couples raising chicks, male seahorses giving birth, or dolphins engaging in nonreproductive sexual behaviors.