A dog at a LGBTQ pride parade.
In one of the most ridiculous examples of homophobia clouding someone’s judgment, a dog owner surrendered his pooch to the Stanly County Animal Protective Services in North Carolina after claiming it is “gay.”
According to WCCB-TV, the owners saw Fezco humping another male dog so they surrendered him because of his sexuality.
Fezco is a brown and black dog resembling a Rottweiler who appears to be 4 to 5 years old and around 50 pounds. The shelter says he is friendly to people and other animals. It didn’t comment on his sexual orientation.
It’s bizarre that anyone would care about their dog’s sexual orientation unless they were a breeder. But if the dog was humping another dog it probably didn’t have much to do with sex anyway.
The only gay dog in the village!\n\nDog called Fezco dumped at shelter after it humped another male canine https://mol.im/a/10632821\u00a0 via https://dailym.ai/android— Fiona K. #BackBoris (@Fiona K. #BackBoris) 1647821795
Younger dogs that have not been spayed or neutered may hump other dogs, objects or legs as a way to practice for when they research sexual maturity. In many cases, dogs of any age will hump another dog to show dominance or during play.
“You’ll often see one dog mount another, then a few minutes later they’ll switch off and the other dog will mount the first dog,” Gary Landsberg, DVM, a veterinary behaviorist in Ontario, Canada, told WebMD’s Fetch. “It’s a common play gesture.
“It’s a play behavior that dogs do because no one has told them it’s not acceptable,” Landsberg added. “It can become enjoyable or a normal part of the dog’s day, so it keeps doing it. It’s the same as jumping up or barking at the door.”
People shouldn’t worry about their dog’s humping behavior unless it becomes a habit.
“The topic draws giggles and laughs, but it’s a very real topic for some people,” David S. Spiegel, VMD said. “Some dogs can become very compulsive about the behavior.”
But if the dog had homosexual tendencies, it wouldn’t be unusual.
According to Scientific American, homosexuality is fairly common in the animal kingdom. In fact, same-sex sexual behavior, which includes mounting, courting and genital licking, has been reported in more than 1,500 animal species from primates to nematode worms.
At first glance, it seems that homosexuality would run counter to the basic tenets of evolution and natural selection. Why would nature favor a trait that would make a species less likely to reproduce?
Researchers at Scientific American postulate that some ancestral animal species may have mated without taking sex into consideration. They had yet to develop the necessary faculties to detect sexual differences so they engaged with whatever they could.
The shelter put out a call for people to adopt or foster Fezco and, according to TMZ, people have been lining up to give the dog a homophobic-free forever home. Upworthy reached out to the shelter for an update on Fezco’s status and has yet to hear back.
While it’s sad that Fezco has had to deal with the trauma of being abandoned by his owners, it may be for the best. Anyone who would ditch their dog because it displayed homosexual behaviors or because they misunderstood a basic behavior probably shouldn’t be trusted to take care of a pet anyway.
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