Birds are often thought to be the upstanding moral members of the animal kingdom. Swans have a rep (false!) for mating for life and up until recently 90% of bird species were believed to be monogamous. Prepare to have that pedestal toppled because it turns out, birds are just as slutty as the rest of us. As the former owner a pair of nympho lovebirds this news probably doesn’t shock me as much as it does you. Whenever those two birds weren’t screeching or trying to bust out of their cage, they were screwing each other’s brains out. Do you have any idea how unnerving it is to watch two cherubic little budgies get busy? Kind of like if you stumbled upon Bambi trussed up in a leather harness, with Winnie the Pooh giving it to her from behind. Yuck. But I digress. I’ve heard a lot of crap justifications for cheating, but it turns out that female finches actually have a good reason for straying, and for being sneaky about it. “Regardless of whether he was the social partner or the extra pair, the male that was the most genetically compatible with the female was the one that fathered most of the offspring,” said Sarah Pryke, a behavioral ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.Unfortunately, good genetic material does not necessarily mean solid parenting, so the female finch will go behind the good daddy’s back to get impregnated and then come back and raise the babies with her partner. And she needs to be discreet because if “daddy” finds out he’s not daddy, he’ll dump her cheating bird-butt. I know you’re probably still reeling from the devastating news of the cheating finches, but sit down because there’s more. Turns out that over 130 bird species are actually gay. I’m not talkin’ chirpy and happy gay either–I’m talking homosexual. Not only that, but science is saying that’s, evolutionarily speaking, a good thing.Far from causing species to die out, “In some cases, homosexual alliances may even be adaptive, helping individuals defend territories, advance their social status, or get help with parental care,” say the scientists. Parental care? Next they’ll be telling us that gay human parents are just as competent as the straights.(Unfortunately, Fred Phelps was not returning phone calls, so I have no idea how God feels about all this.)