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As part of my final year at Oxford University studying Biological Sciences, I was required to complete a 3000 word extended essay on a title of my choosing. The widespread existence of homosexuality among humans and other animal species fascinates me, which led to me deciding to write on an evolutionary theory that explains its persistence as a behavioural trait. This is a relatively new theory, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing on up-and-coming research. Below is the full extended essay: 
(Click "Read More" for Abstract) Same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB) is widespread across animal taxa despite its presumed fitness costs. The literature has attempted to justify this by endeavouring to uncover its adaptive and maladaptive origins, in an attempt to resolve its repeated evolution. However, this includes the unchecked assumption that the earliest species exhibited exclusive different-sex sexual behaviour (DSB), from which SSB evolved. This notion is challenged by the ancestral indiscriminate sexual behaviour (ISB) hypothesis, which states that sexual behaviour first evolved as a trait that was non-targeted towards particular sexes, resulting in expression of both SSB and DSB, from which condition SSB has persisted. By shifting the evolutionary baseline of sexual behaviour, we can depart from a ‘justification-based’ perspective of SSB that has perhaps been influenced by a propensity of heteronormativity in the literature, and instead reconcile the widespread nature of such behaviour with its ancestral condition.
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