#3. A Shout-out to Gay Sheep
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) received a lot of press
in January after launching an aggressive campaign against researchers at
Oregon Health & Science University who killed dozens of gay sheep
in order to dissect their brains, a project whose ultimate goal — the animal-rights
group claimed — was to develop a drug to cure homosexuality. The accusation turned
out to be false; the scientists were actually blocking a hormone to see if it led to
more ram-on-ram sex, not less. One reason the team chose to look for
neurological differences between straight and gay sheep is because about 8% of rams exhibit homosexuality, roughly the same percentage as in humans.