Week 17 2023: DNA #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

Happy Pride Month, folks!

A couple of Saturday’s ago, I was listening to a story on Radio Lab, a program from WNYC Studios, broadcast in multiple formats including on my local NPR station. This program had me stuck to my seat (they call them “driveway moments”) and I’ll share a link to it below.

In 1972, a pair of researchers from the University of California at Irvine undertook a years-long study of a sea gull colony on San Nicolas Island off the coast of Santa Barbara. What they found ruffled a few feathers, so to speak.

I’ll cut to the chase: George and Molly Hunt found that of the 1,400 birds on the island, 14% were lesbian.[1]

Here’s the link to the Radio Lab “The Seagulls” reported by Lulu Miller: http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/seagulls/ .

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[1] John C. Wingfield, Audrey Martin, Molly W. Hunt, George L. Hunt, Jr and Donald S. Farner, “Origin of Homosexual Pairing of Female Western Gulls on Santa Barbara Island,” digital image, The California State University (https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/2514nm30s : accessed 28 June 2023).