Science of same-sex sexual behavior

[viking8x6]

Interesting article in my news feed this morning about same-sex sexual behaviors in (non-human) mammals, with some hypotheses about why it (repeatedly) evolves.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41290-x

TL;DR - One of the hypotheses (excerpt below) focuses on mediating lethal conflicts by substituting sexual behavior in the establishment of dominance hierarchies, particularly among males. Gee, doesn't that sound an awful lot like the whole "alpha" dynamic that we talk about here? Hmmm.... interesting!

Quote

Same-sex sexual behaviour contributes to diminishing intrasexual aggression and conflict. This hypothesis postulates that same-sex sexual interactions may serve to communicate social status and establish and reinforce dominance hierarchies, thus preventing future conflicts, or may contribute to diverting aggressive behaviour toward courtship behaviour, providing subordinate males with greater opportunities to furtively copulate with females. Because same-sex sexual behaviour is suggested to mitigate rather than completely eliminate aggressive behaviour, this second hypothesis predicts that same-sex sexual behaviour should be more frequent in species with aggressive and lethal intrasexual interactions than in more peaceful and nonlethal species.