mammal

Horace - who has been welcoming people to Lynn Museum for many years - was a royal gift from the nearby Sandringham Estate in 1928. During conservation work in 2005 it came as quite a surprise to discover that Horace was actually a female! King Edward VII had a reputation as a big game hunter in India so at the time it was only natural to assume that he had killed a ferocious male tiger. Although this case of gender ambiguity was very much an error on the part of humans, there have been many documented examples of gender fluidity and homosexual behaviour throughout the animal kingdom. For example, seahorses are famous for the fact that the males of their species are the ones to carry and give birth to their young. The male seahorse has a pouch on front its tail, where the female seahorse deposits up to 1,500 eggs. The male carries the eggs until the young emerge, after which they are released into the water. There have also been well documented cases of same-sex sexual behaviour throughout nature. The Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway have previously noted that "homosexuality has been observed among 1,500 species” – and these are just the ones that we know about. This behaviour has been spotted in animals as wide ranging as penguins, monkeys, dolphins, giraffes, ducks and lions.