CONNOR BUTLER: Historically, when people would see beetles

mating with each other, they'd often assume that there would be

a male and a female.

But actually, what these scientists then did was prove,

if you take a closer look, it's often not the case, we can't

presume, we shouldn't presume what we know about nature

because nature doesn't follow our rules.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Hello, I'm Ranger Rosie Holdsworth, and

today we're looking for a beetle whose flaps caused a flap in

entomology and how projecting society onto science has shaped

our understanding of the natural world.

Can we ever let bugs be bugs?

Welcome to Wild Tales, the queer life of a cockchafer.

CONNOR BUTLER: So today I am walking around Osterley Park.

It's a beautiful day. Because now is the perfect time to try

and find some insects.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This is Connor Butler, an ecologist and

entomologist. He spends his days tracking down bugs and teaching

others about their weird and wonderful nature.

CONNOR BUTLER: The reason I love insects so much is firstly

because they are everywhere.

The good thing about that is that you're never bored in life.

You can always find insects.

And there's something about looking for things that are

small and hidden that kind of makes them feel a bit like

treasure.

They're so pretty when you look at them up close.

It's interesting to me that these beetles are so, so

brightly colored, dung beetles especially, they live their life

in animal poo, and yet so many of them are these metallic blues

and greens.

Why did they evolve this amazing colour? It's bizarre to me.

That's kind of why I like them. They just sort of defy

expectations of what normality is.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Standing under the shade of a huge gnarled oak

tree, Connor inspects the leaves of a lush green canopy, the

veins shining through its cloud-shaped leaves.

CONNOR BUTLER: And what I'm looking for right now is any

damage, any bite marks that could have been done by insects.

And I've seen a few leaves, they've got these big chunks

taken out of and what I'm really looking for is a really special

beetle called a cockchafer.

And what they're doing is they're feeding on leaves of

trees.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The cockchafer goes by many names, a June bug,

a May bug, or a doodlebug for their loud and clumsy flight.

CONNOR BUTLER: I call them Cockchafers.

So cockchafer, the first part of the word means something that's

big, kind of very mighty cos it's quite a big beetle.

And chafer comes from the old word for chewing, because all

beetles have these chewing mouth parts.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The life cycle of this bug is extraordinary.

They spend 3 to 4 years underground as grubs munching on

roots before metamorphosing like a butterfly, sometimes in their

thousands into their adult forms, but they also have

another claim to fame.

CONNOR BUTLER: Cockchafers were the first ever species of animal

to be illustrated depicting same-sex sexual behavior.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Same-sex mating in animals has been

documented for hundreds of years, but studying this

behaviour has always come up against a problem. Us.

Some people refer to this as Darwin's paradox. If sex isn't

for reproduction, we dismiss it.

This is what makes the 1896 illustration of the cockchafer

so special, but it was not a simple journey to get there. It

took entomologists six decades to create this image.

In 1834, an entomologist and schoolteacher, August Kelch,

came across two mating Cockchafers whilst wandering in

a forest in Germany, but he noticed something.

CONNOR BUTLER: So the way you can actually determine what sex

a beetle is, for Cockchafers is you count the number of flaps on

their antennae, and males have got 7 flaps and females have got

6.

And when this German entomologist looked at these two

beetles, he realized that they both had 7 flaps, they were both

male.

And so he was very confused why these two male beetles were

reproducing or attempting to reproduce with each other.

And so he thought that it was probably a dominance thing,

because the male European cockchafer is much bigger than

the forest cockchafer.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The mating was dismissed, but the sightings

keep happening in a lemon grove in France, in fireflies dancing

above a pond, and more and more frequently in the laboratory of

entomologists.

But it isn't until 1896 that pen is put to paper.

CONNOR BUTLER: There's a French entomologist called Henri

Gardeau de Kerville, and he does the first ever illustration of

these beetles. He draws two male Cockchafers mating each other.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: It's a delicate diagram of two beetles

linked by their perineum, which looks like a stinger.

CONNOR BUTLER: And when he published this, it was really

controversial because of course it shows something that was

considered to be kind of unnatural, and a lot of people

were very negative towards this.

But he said it was so common that it kind of showed that

there was this intrinsic nature of these beetles to do this.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This conclusion began a decades-long

argument between entomologists. On one side, Henri Gardeau de

Kerville argued that some Cockchafers were doing it by

preference.

On the other, a French physician and neurologist, Charles Fére,

insisted that the hot-blooded males were tricked into

unnatural acts by misleading pheromones.

This long argument didn't really teach us anything definitive

about Cockchafers. We still don't know why some of them

choose to mate with other males, but it did teach us a lot about

humanity.

CONNOR BUTLER: Now what's really interesting about the case of

the cockchafer is that that kind of bias in society, we're always

trying to justify why something is doing something.

So if we see two male beetles attempting to mate with each

other, we're always trying to explain away that it could be

something that is homosexual, and we don't of course, we don't

know with nature.

But by trying to say that it's a dominance thing, or it's an

aggression thing kind of-

It's quite a closed-minded approach, I think.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This'explain the gay away' is a common

phenomenon in natural history, but in many cases, research was

buried completely.

It's difficult to know exactly how much research has been

hidden, suppressed, or ignored, but as recently as the 1980s,

Doctor Janet Mann witnessed " More gay sex than imaginable"

amongst dolphins, but delayed the publishing of her findings,

fearful of being pigeonholed and fearful of the misrepresentation

of her research.

CONNOR BUTLER: Imagine if you were in the 1890s and you see

this drawing of these two male Cockchafers mating with each

other.

It was kind of the first time that the idea of homosexuality

being something that was natural was brought into science. And so

it was really controversial, but also I think it was probably

quite powerful for a lot of people to see themselves, yeah,

reflected in nature.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Seeing same-sex behaviour in nature was

and still can be revolutionary. After hearing about the first

discovery of male Cockchafers mating in Germany, Karl Heinrich

Ulrichs, one of the earliest advocates for LGBTQ + rights,

wrote in 1879: "

Sexual orientation is a right established by nature.

Legislators have no right to veto nature, no right to

persecute nature in the course of its work, no right to torture

living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave

them. The battle against nature is a hopeless one."

That's a really good quote on many levels, like, it's a good

quote.

Science is meant to be objective, to give us the facts,

but in reality, our science is influenced by society.

From the lack of research on women's health to ignoring sex

for pleasure in dolphins, our science has bias.

Naturalists have long warned against anthropomorphizing

animals. The natural world follows different rules to our

own.

Yet it's something we do time and time again, unconsciously

and unquestioningly. So our science continues to reflect our

societal values, whatever they might be.

And although our society has changed and is still changing,

there remains some evidence of the bias we saw 100 years ago.

CONNOR BUTLER: Earlier last year, there was a case of two

humpback whales that were found mating with each other and it

was the first time humpback whales had ever been

photographed mating.

And it turned out that actually there were two male humpback

whales. And of course, there was a lot of controversy, a lot of

people were saying, oh, it's just a dominance thing, it's an

aggression thing.

But really, we can never know and that's kind of the whole

point.

We see homosexual activity in nature, it's really common. If

you ever raised chickens or studied insects, it's really

common to see same-sex couples and same-sex matings.

And so all we can say is it exists in nature. We don't

necessarily need to justify why it's happened because we'll

never really know.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: We see in the headlines from time to time, gay

penguin dads, gay dolphins, a panic about mushrooms changing

sex but the truth is that these headlines obscure something

vital.

Sex and gender in nature is more diverse, more expansive and far

more fluid than we could ever imagine. It's our assumptions

about nature that can limit our understanding.

CONNOR BUTLER: Queer ecology is trying to unlearn a lot of that.

And the more we learn about nature, the more we realize that

it's incredibly diverse. It doesn't follow all the rules of

society, it doesn't follow the binaries, it's really fluid.

And I think from that we can then look at ourselves and

realize that actually, we're all part of nature and our fluidity

is also part of nature.

And I think that when you then start to question those things,

you look at nature very differently.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: For hundreds of years, members of the LGBTQ +

community have been told that something about them is

unnatural.

And looking at bugs may not have the answer to a societal

problem, but Connor knows first hand the impact it can have.

CONNOR BUTLER: So I do a lot of queer ecology walks where I take

people out into nature and I look at plants and animals that

have kind of unconventional life cycles.

And what I found really interesting is that people find

it cathartic to see lots of plants and animals with these

really diverse life cycles, whether or not they're asexual,

if it's a bird that has the same sexual pairings, if it's a

woodlouse that is changing sex or a tree that is changing sex,

and people like to see themselves reflected in nature.

It's a hard thing growing up if you're a queer person,

especially in today's society. I mean, it's always been hard, but

It's good to have people that are connected to to nature.

But it's a slippery slope as well, because there's also lots

of really horrible things in nature.

There's parasitism, there's murder, there's things eating

each other. So really, we shouldn't try and use nature as

the basis for what we think is right or moral, and actually

should just do what we as humans think is right, which is that

everyone should be accepted to be who they are and just be

themselves.

So as much as you want to take away from insects and we see

these same-sex matings, at the end of the day, we're all just

trying to get through life and hopefully flip over some logs

and see some nice bugs now and again.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Thanks for joining me in this wild tale. Do

you have an amazing story about the natural world? I'd love to

hear from you. You can find us on Instagram @wildtalesNT where

you'll also find behind the scenes moments, nature's giants,

and the micro wonders that make our world the place it is.

Use the hashtag #Wildtaleswednesdays, or email

podcasts at nationaltrust.org.uk to send us pictures and stories

of the wildness around you.

Make sure you get every episode by following Wild Tales on your

favourite podcast app. Even better, leave us a review or

comment on an episode.

I'd love to hear what you think.

Did you know we also do video podcasts. They can be found on

our YouTube channel or on Spotify.

While you're there, why not check out our history show back

when or for smaller ears, Ranger Rae and the Wildlifers.

See you next time.