A scientist claims most humans are bis£xual and s£xuality is “heritable”, with almost everyone having them to a lesser or greater degree.
According to the most recent official stats, 987,000 UK people aged 16 or over identify as bis£xual, meaning they’re s£xually attracted to both men and women.
This is a rise from 457,000 people who said they were bis£xual in 2018.
However, the true number of people having both same-s£x and opposite-s£x encounters is actually much higher, a scientist suggests.
Dr Jason Hodgson, anthropologist and evolutionary geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, thinks most people are “in the bis£xual range” – much like our primate relatives living wild in the jungle.
He says s£xuality is a spectrum, from exclusively heteros£xual at one end, through the bis£xual range, to exclusively homos£xual at the other end.
Heteros£xuality and homos£xuality are at the extremes of this spectrum, so most people should be somewhere in the middle in that they have s£x with both men and women.
“I predict that most people should actually be bis£xual,” Dr Hodson told MailOnline.
“The genes that influence same s£x s£xual behaviour are probably just genes that influence general sociality, and people in the middle of the range of variation are probably better at all social relationships.
“Therefore people who would engage in same-s£x s£xual behaviour in some situations are probably also better at forming heteros£xual relationships.”
To elaborate further, the academic imagines a s£xuality spectrum running from 0 to 1, denoting the proportion of same-s£x experiences out of all s£xual experiences.
A person with a value of zero would have 0 per cent same-s£x experiences, and 100 per cent heteros£xual experiences, while a person with a value of 1 would have 100 per cent same-s£x experiences and 0 per cent heteros£xual experiences.
“Those are the homos£xual and heteros£xual extremes of the scale,” he said.
“Everything in between would be in the bis£xual range – some proportion of same s£x, and some proportion of opposite s£x s£xual experiences.
“So if a person had one homos£xual experience and 99 heteros£xual experiences their value would be 1/100 or 0.01 – just slightly in the bisexual range.
“I suspect most people would be slightly in the bis£xual range if given the right social circumstances.”
Dr Hodgson stresses that there’s a “very important distinction” between identifying as bis%xual and engaging in bis£xual behaviour.
So although official new data reveals 1.8 per cent of UK adults identify as bis£xual, the proportion of people who have are truly bis£xual is likely much higher.
“For example, people who identify as 100 per cent heteros£xual might still have had a consenting same s£x s£xual experience at some time in their lives,” Dr Hodgson told MailOnline.
“These people would fall into the bis£xual range of the behavioural scale.”
The expert points to one of our closest living relatives in the wild, the bonobo, which has high rates of has same-s£x and opposite-s£x encounters.
Bonobos are one of the few species in which all adult members of one s£x engage in habitual same-s£x s£xual interactions that occur at similar or even greater frequencies as opposite-s£x interactions.
“Bonobos are bisexual, and this is thought to contribute to group cohesion,” the academic wrote in a 2016 research paper.
“Bis£xuality may be the norm, as those individuals involved in homos£xual s%x often also take part in reproductive s£x.”
According to Dr Hodgson, s£x plays an important social role in other primates, but none more so than humans.
Whether we’re having same-s£x or opposite-s£x interactions, Dr Hodgson says that our s£xual behaviour is carried in our genes.
“S£xuality runs in families (it is heritable), and there are many, many genes involved each of which only has a small influence,” he told MailOnline.
“Genes that influence same-s£x s£xual behaviour are common, and most everyone has them to a lesser or greater degree.”
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