"Empirical" includes naturalistic observation, not just experimental manipulation. I believe just the opposite of what you have written, and that is, removing the other male(s) actually make a much less natural environment for determining sexual preference in this EBT. Alternative sexual behavior among many animal species can be induced by restricting access to one sex or the other, so the experiment you suggest wouldn't prove or disprove anything, in fact, would "stack the deck" for getting heterosexual behavior.

Of course my habitat doesn't mimic the natural range of EBTs...in fact, no habitat less than several square miles of wilderness areas does. But I have witnessed hundreds of pursuit, combat, mating attempts, copulation, nesting, egg deposition, hatching over the past decade with a number of different EBTs and the example I presented here does represent an aberrancy from everything else I have observed.

I agree that my habitat might induce some differences that would not be observed in a wilderness area, so we can't generalize to a wilderness population of EBTs, however, I'll call it for what it is...preferential homosexual behavior in an EBT in my outdoor habitat.
-----
Sloop John B
MORELIA TROPHY CLUB
moreliapython.googlepages.com/

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]