Sex between two animals of the same sex is widespread. Over 1,000 animal species from nematode worms to penguins to cattle all dabble in same-sex interactions. But a relationship between a bull named Achille and a male donkey named Patrocolo is raising eyebrows. The pair lives on a plateau in Ethiopia, and both could have chosen partners of the opposite sex and same species on numerous occasions. However, they continued to choose each other, despite belonging to different owners and only seeing one another when spending time in a pasture. A study published today in the journal Current Biology chronicles this surprising union.
“The sexual interactions between Achille, the bull, and Patroclo, the male donkey, were not isolated events,” Elisabetta Palagi, a study co-author and evolutionary biologist at the Università di Pisa (UNIPI) in Italy, said in a statement. “What really caught our attention was that these interactions were embedded in a very selective and consistent social relationship between the two individuals.”
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