FEATURE
Nature is Far From Binary: It is Bountiful
A pink and white hibiscus flower in full bloom. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
From a very young age, I always knew I was queer, but as a child, I just didn't have the tools to understand what that meant. Reflecting on my journey as an ecologist, animal behaviourist, and educator, it makes perfect sense to me now why I was attracted to the natural world. It, too, is queer just like me. As we begin to explore, we realize that nature doesn't limit itself to binaries. Instead, it is bountiful in its depth of ecological processes.
In the end, everything is connected to the natural world around us, and if we pay close attention, we see ourselves reflected in nature. It was through this reflection that I, and many others like me, have come to understand how queerness presents itself in nature. Through this reflection, I not only came to understand my own queerness, but, more importantly, how queerness in nature can help us all better recognize the strength within our LGBTQIA+ community.
Connecting Nature and Queerness
I have been fortunate enough to be working for three years now at Lincoln Park Zoo as a Guest Engagement Coordinator. At Lincoln Park Zoo, we are committed to creating an environment that is inclusive and welcoming. We celebrate the diverse qualities, perspectives, values and experiences of all people, including our guests, volunteers, and staff. We are For Wildlife and we are For All. Our vision is to inspire communities to create environments where wildlife will thrive in our urbanizing world.
Ultimately, this vision explores how wildlife and humans coexist, so it was the perfect opportunity to explore queerness in nature through interpretation and how it connects to humans. After being a Certified Interpretive Guide for seven years, and just recently becoming a Certified Interpretive Trainer, I saw no better opportunity than the present to share my exploration of queerness in nature through the lens of what drives curiosity for most of our visitors to Lincoln Park Zoo: the animals and their own behaviors.
I hope that by sharing some of my favorite interpretive stories in this article, I might inspire more readers to implement their own programs that explore the vast diversity of queer behaviors we see in nature. By doing so, we can all become champions for the LGBTQIA+ community and continue to strengthen and build connections with nature for all people.
In 2024, Lincoln Park Zoo delivered a series of interpretive programs as part of an after-hours event called Adult Nights Out: Pride Party. These programs were collectively inspired by the interests and areas of expertise of members of “QueerKats,” our LGBTQIA+ Employee Working Group.
Each program hosted as part of Adult Nights Out: Pride Party was about five to ten minutes long and focused on one of four topics: Japanese macaques, African lions, birds, and queer botany. While each program itself had its own miniature theme, these programs were unified by a central theme that connected them and was shared at the start of each program. That theme was: Exploring queerness in nature helps us understand the strength of our community. What follows in this article is an overview of our program's core topics and their connections to the queer community. Through this article, I hope to explore how queerness presents itself in a variety of animal communities and provide examples of how we might build connections to our own.
Multiple snow monkeys participate in social huddling behaviours. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
Japanese Macaques
For Japanese macaques, family means everything. So, let's explore how their complex relationships defy heteronormative gender concepts! Heteronormativity is the belief that there are two separate and opposing genders with associated natural roles that match their assigned sex. In many social circumstances, this may show up in the form of male dominance or male hierarchy (gorilla, lions, etc.), but macaques show us how nature defies these concepts.
Like most other primates, Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, are social animals. However, the most dominant individual within a snow monkey family group is always a female, with all members of the group following a strong social hierarchy. As interpreters, we could use this example to ask our audience to reflect on heteronormativity in their own lives, and how breaking those ideologies can lead to stronger communities, much like the ones seen in snow monkeys.
Macaques defy heteronormative gender concepts by having a matrilineal hierarchy: lineage and inheritance are traced through a group's female members. As such, the group is centered around the kinship and bonding between females, with some groups having a single male in the troop. Daughters inherit their mother’s social ranking, which means younger monkeys often outrank older monkeys.
Female Japanese macaques also form intense, exclusive pair bonds with each other based on mutual sexual attraction. These pair bonds are known as consortships and are characterized by a number of unique affectionate, sexual, and social activities. Female consortships spend vast amounts of time with each other; huddling for close physical contact or grooming each other which is a common social behavior seen in macaque troops.
Two juvenile male lions cuddling while they rest on top of a rock. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
African Lions
For African lions, strength is not from “being king,” but rather from their unique social dynamics. Lions are the only big cats that live in social groups called prides. From cooperative hunting strategies that increase the likelihood of prey capture, to social relationships among individual lions that strengthen social bonds, living in a social group makes life easier for every lion in the pride. Before launching into the content, I may ask my audience questions about what they think of when they imagine lions. Many may highlight common tropes like “King of the Jungle,” or how they think of the classic Disney film The Lion King, but surprisingly few may think of how pride presents itself in the social dynamics of individual lions.
Lions in the wild commonly form social relationships within and without the pride that take many forms. Specifically, male and female pride mates can form same-sex bonds with each other that are quite strong. Females will typically crawl under other females to encourage mounting behavior and as such a lioness may display behaviors common in heterosexual mating. Typical behaviors among male partnerships include mutual head rubbing, sliding and rubbing against each other, and even mounting behaviors. A male lion may even sometimes court a single individual, spending time with them and defending his partner against intruding males.
A young lion cub, flipped on his back with his tongue sticking out. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
Joe Frumkin interpreting to guests about a live Penguin Feed demonstration. Photo by Heather Brousalis.
Birds
The sky’s the limit when it comes to the diversity of behaviors in birds, and there are many examples of how queer relationships in birds help sustain healthy populations. Many bird species have diverse family structures, which benefit the population as a whole. Raising young chicks is a difficult job! Compare this to how mammals care for their young; they develop in a womb, so mammals can run from predators. Many mammals are born ready to run and able to flee danger within minutes. However, birds don’t have this luxury. Eggs must always have constant oversight, in case predators come by, so parents can't leave. They must choose to fight or abandon the nest. This can lead to high levels of mortality in nesting birds.
In around ten percent of wild greylag goose populations, the birds circumvent these difficulties by forming polyamorous relationships to care for young; one common grouping is having two males and one female. With three parents, the eggs have a higher chance of survival! While only about twenty percent of heterosexual pairs manage to raise young to fledgling age, the rates are higher for polyamorous relationships. In addition, some families foster-parent chicks by combining their brood with another family. Widowed birds may even adopt chicks as well. While we’ve been discussing birds, it’s easy to see analogies to how their family structures can reflect our own society. Polyamorous or same-sex couples can adopt or foster children, providing a loving family for those in need and growing a community.
Queer Botany
People and pollinators share a fascinating, colorful, and queer history with flowers! Flowers come in many shapes, colors and sizes, and their main priority is to produce offspring. However, it's a bit of a challenge to produce offspring when you can't move, so flowers do the job. They attract pollinators, cover them in pollen, and those pollinators then spread pollen to other plants. To attract pollinators, they need to catch an animal’s attention. Have you ever wondered why flowers smell so good? It’s for the pollinators, of course! Both the smell and the look of the flower are important considerations for them.
Thanks to evolution, flowers break the binary in some truly extraordinary ways. While some flowers possess just one sex, either male or female, other flowers possess both male and female parts. These flowers are known as “perfect flowers.” A common example of a perfect flower is the sunflower, which has multiple flowers within one. In the center of the sunflower there are dozens of little florets: each floret is an individual flower. Each of these flowers opens from the outside, inward. Each floret first starts out as a male, giving nectar to the bees and pollen. The next day, this floret changes sex to become female and is ready to be pollinated by the next group of male flowers just opening up. This ensures each flower isn't self pollinated.
Another common example of a plant that breaks the binary is the ginkgo tree. The ginkgo tree has been around since before the dinosaurs. Ginkgos are “imperfect” trees, so there are both male and female trees. However, several arboretums report that some branches of all-male trees have changed sexes and started producing female reproductive parts. This could be an adaptation to increase the reproductive potential of the population.
The zoo’s horticulture team loves to say “The biodiversity reflected in the plant world […] is not just necessary—it’s desirable for survival and growth.” The queer community reflects a similar diversity that’s just as important.
A monarch butterfly landed on a flower. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
Joe Frumkin taking a selfie with a goat. Photo by Joe Frumkin.
Expanding the Tool Box
Japanese macaques, African lions, birds, and queer botany are just a few examples of how we can explore queerness in nature. The diversity in which nature expresses itself is vast, beautiful, and a perfect reflection of our own communities. There is no wrong way to explore it, and there are infinitely more stories to tell.
For me, it was the exploration of these stories that led to adding new tools that helped me in exploring my own queerness. While I will never have a full understanding of it, I know I have an evolved perspective of myself than I did ten years ago. Think of the power that stories like these hold for any guest in your audience that might also be struggling in their own exploration. Encouraging curiosity in the world around you inspires self discovery. This is one pinnacle aspect of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, of which we all hope to inspire our guests to reach through our interpretation.
Interpreting beyond the binary can help interpreters understand deeper meanings inherent in their resource, and better approach ways to communicate with all audiences. I would encourage all of you to expand the stories you tell and explore further ways that Nature is not binary—but bountiful!
