People & Culture
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Wildlife
Knowing nature for what it is with Connel Bradwell
The biologist and filmmaker on his latest documentary Animal Pride, an exploration of queer animal behaviour
- May 27, 2025
- 1,511 words
- 7 minutes
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Wildlife filmmaker and conservationist Connel Bradwell was researching orcas when he saw something… he did not expect: two male orca engaging in courtship behaviour. No: they weren’t roommates. As a queer biologist, Bradwell started to ask questions: “How come I didn’t know that much about homosexuality and queerness in the natural world? Why haven’t we been talking about this? Why didn’t I learn this at university?” In search of answers, Bradwell brought the concept to production company Handful of Films and assembled a creative team that included director Rio Mitchell and writer Erinn Drage. The result? Animal Pride (which premieres Thursday May 29 on CBC’s The Nature of Things) a nature documentary unlike anything you’ve seen before that shines a dazzling light on the natural world — and our place in it.
On queerness in nature and biodiversity
Queerness is found extensively throughout the natural world. It’s seen at every trophic level. It’s pretty much everywhere. When we were going through what species we could cover, that was really difficult because, at the beginning we were like “gosh, are there going to be enough examples?” And by the end you’re like, “oh, everything is an example!” It’s the rule, not the exception. I think what was so amazing and interesting is that queerness is expressed in such unique different ways in different species. There is no one queer behaviour. What queerness looks like for an albatross is different to a human is different to a banana slug. But it can still go under the umbrella of queerness. When we think about queer nature being biodiversity, what we’re saying with that statement is that you can’t have biodiversity without queer nature. In a biodiverse habitat, there’s going to be a lot of queer behaviours going on.
On challenging biases in mainstream science
We have a heteronormative bias. We see either what we want to see or what we’re used to seeing. So often we make assumptions about animals — such as assuming all the pairs that we might see are heterosexual pairs — but without ever really checking that. Or, historically where we’ve seen same sex behaviour it’s been hidden: that’s bringing biases from someone’s opinion and putting it onto the natural world. So we challenge that and ask: why do we put these biases on the natural world? Why has it been hidden and what the impact of that is? Because it does have a big impact, not just on us and on the animals, but on the wider way that we conserve nature.
On the history of science
We talk about a little bit about Darwin, and we talk about [George Murray] Levick. I guess the takeaway from that is we’re not trying to drag science through the mud; actually our documentary is anchored in science. But it’s about recognizing that a lot of these scientific discoveries and our perceptions of the natural world come from a very specific period of time in a very specific place. So England, in a lot of cases, the UK during a very specific time period. I think that it’s important to look at the context of that as well and say, well, okay, they saw this, this and this. But they also had a lot of baggage associated with that time and they were putting that onto animals.
In Levick’s case, you know, he definitely judged the [Adélie] penguins somewhat for their same sex behavior. But he also tried to publish the data. He tried to publish their behaviour, and he wasn’t allowed. It was hidden. And it was society and the societal norms at that time that stopped him. So we’re not trying to attack scientists and the people and whatnot. It’s just contextualizing what we think of the natural world and why we might have this perception and where that comes from. In Levick’s case, you know, he tried and tried to tell the world and he got denied.
It was really interesting to get a native Hawaiian perspective on the albatross, because it challenged how the scientific community have often seen the natural world. It really brought home how we really are just hearing one side of the story a lot of the time, or we’re hearing one person’s perspectives of it — a perspective of how we saw the world and how we saw society at that period of time, which was extremely colonial and extremely problematic. In the documentary, we’re trying to look at how we can start to undo those and really get to know nature around us for what it actually is rather than what a group of men saw it as in the 1800s.
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On how things are changing now
Today we are looking at nature slightly differently. It feels as though like the tide is turning and it feels like it just needed a couple of examples to come out to really engage the scientific community and the wider natural history world and everyone to kinda go, “oh, that’s interesting.” When [biologist Lindsay Young] released her paper about the same sex chick rearing behavior in albatrosses, other scientists [started] exploring that in different bird species. We’re starting to change how we perceive the natural world. I do genuinely think today, you know, a lot of the time, people weren’t … homophobic. They just didn’t know. And then they found out. That’s really helped bring that conversation forward. The world is rapidly changing and we do need to get to know nature for what it really is. And these animals for what they really are. I think that as the scientific community diversifies, and I think as more queer people enter the space, that is what’s happening and going to continue to happen. That will only be good for nature, which will be in turn good for us.
On how understanding queerness in nature can help protect it
Understanding queerness in the natural world is important for conservation. It’s not just a story about queerness and how its natural it is — but how much we have to understand these animals and see them for what they really are, not just what we perceive them to be or what human biases we put on them. Because that’s the only way we will be able to adequately protect them. You have to be able to create protections that allow penguins to be penguins. Or animals like orca, penguins, albatross, slugs, I mean… multiple species have these societies and behaviors that are really important to the function of their populations. If we don’t know about it or are actively ignoring it or hiding it, then we’re missing a part of the puzzle. We’ll never be able to properly protect them, if we’re not taking into account [their behaviours] and setting up a place where they can be what they actually are.
On sexual expression in fungi
The fungi really blew my mind because it’s an organism that has thousands of sexual expressions. So, you know, it totally blows up this idea that there’s just two sexes, male and female, in nature. Yet fungi show that there are thousands of different variations of sexual expression — and for them, it’s really, really beneficial. They send out their spores, and within each of those spores there’s a different genetic makeup for a different sexual expression. And when they bump into one another, they can transfer their DNA and essentially “mate.” Sexual diversity is key to their survival.
On celebrating queer joy
We didn’t take calling the documentary “Animal Pride” lightly. Pride is a celebration and pride is a protest. Pride is about our rights and our freedoms and the right to be who we are. But pride is all those serious things packaged in fun and creativity and joy — so we wanted to reflect that in the documentary. We wanted to tell this story about these serious topics in a way that also celebrated the queer community, celebrated queerness in nature and was like a pride event … We really worked hard to make it fun. And having that queer team, we all had a personal connection to this story and we all understood what pride is about, and that’s reflected in how we told the story.
On what he hopes people will take away from the documentary
I honestly want people to take away that nature is queer. That’s the big message of the film —that queerness in nature is not the exception; it’s the rule. And I think that we should question our assumptions, our biases that we put on the natural world. I want people to take away this idea that queer nature is not just for queer people and it’s not just about queerness. It’s actually a conservation issue, if we’re actually looking at nature from a wider lens. For us to understand that is super important to the survival of many, many species. It’s important for us because we need biodiversity as much as anyone. We need a healthy, natural world.
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This story is from the January/February 2025 Issue
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