There is an impression that nature is not just red in tooth and claw, but red-blooded to boot, especially when it comes to sex. Males compete with each other to fornicate with as many females as they can. It is why male elephant seals are so much bigger than their female counterparts; it is why male red deer have antlers; it is, after all, the basis for evolution according to Darwin. Survival of the fittest is really a euphemism for survival of those who fuck the most and thereby sire the most offspring. Survival, in this sense, has got very little to do with longevity: you survive through your children and their children and so on. Heterosexuality, sex between a male and a female, is not a lifestyle choice so much as it is the essence of life itself, the means by which we perpetuate ourselves—at least as far as we vertebrates know it. Consequently, the notion that sex might occur between members of the same sex has long been seen as unnatural and, given the way natural selection works, unlikely: sex without the prospect of producing progeny would seem to be the epitome of an unsuccessful evolutionary strategy. Homosexuality, using this logic, must be an affectation, a foible of human sociology rather than a product of our biology. For a boy brought up in the Victorian era of Great Britain, sodomy was something sordid, an unspoken evil, and certainly the last thing he would expect to see in wild animals. However, life would make a habit of unfolding in unexpected ways for George Murray Levick.