Homosexuality in nature?

Question

Why do you think it exists in nature? Just a little details:

Over 450 species of animals regularly display homosexuality. Many others exhibit bisexuality. (See: birds and bonobos)

The more sons a mother has, the more the chance of their next child becoming homosexual.

Homosexuality occurs most often in social animals.

My theories are:

1. It increases the chances that the offspring will be stronger because if two L*****n japanese macaques stick together, it will take a really strong and aggressive male to mate with them. (sort of like how female animals tend to run away to test the male)

2. It increases survivability overall. It would cause male members of the species to stick together more strongly. Males and females tend not to be together much in pack animals anyways because females need to make babies so, why shouldn't they have a greater attraction to males? Them sticking together causes them to not be preyed on as much and increases chances of catching prey. (See: lions, wolves)

3. Some sort of population control that I don't fully understand yet. I do know that exponential growth can be really bad for some species and cause a resulting mass death or extinction. Homosexual animals would contribute to increasing resources w/o increasing demand (good for nothing babies. :p).

Answer 1

Don't overanalyze this. Animals are horny and when they want to ****, they ****.  

Answer 2

makes you wonder why so many people think it's a "chosen" condition rather than one from birth.  

Answer 3

What if there was no advantage in of itself, but instead a side effect of an advantage?

Genes correlated with male homosexuality are also correlated with increased fertility in females.  The negative selection could easily be offset by the positive selection giving a net benefit for the allele.

Additionally, the birth order thing does hint at a possibility.  A very successful mother who has many sons might have trouble caring for all of them.  A homosexual son would never have to worry about bearing children of his own, instead he could contribute to rearing his siblings and thus his genes would benefit (genetically, siblings are equivalent to children).  

Answer 4

From what I studied, biological nature as an effect, just the set up of the brain. Also the environment that a person is raised in can have a effect. So if one or both are present this can add to the out come of homosexuality.