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...Eating Disorders Unit at the Maudsley Hospital in London, anorexia is not seen as a social disorder - or even primarily a psychological one. While most American treatment providers blame perfection-seeking parents and the media's idealization of hollow-cheeked actresses for eating disorders (among other dysfunctional behaviors), researchers at Maudsley believe the root cause has little to do with social pressure. Rather, they think anorexia is better explained by heredity - perhaps by some of the same genes associated with autism...
...medicine, and caregivers are instructed to use rewards and positive pressure to restore patients' weight. Use of the car and access to other activities desired by teens are offered as incentives for regularly completing meals, for example. Antidepressant medications, like Prozac, which affect serotonin levels and reduce obsessive thinking among anorexics, may later be prescribed, but not until patients have reached a healthy weight - without enough nutrients in the brain, medications can't work. (See the most common hospital mishaps...
...sexual behavior to maintain and strengthen their social relationships - although dolphins are far more explicit about their homosexual play, regularly mounting one another and (hide the kids' ears here) sticking their noses into certain boy-dolphin parts. (Very regularly: roughly half of male dolphin sex occurs with other males.) Among bonobos, same-sex sexual behavior is also thought to ease social tension and facilitate reconciliation. And among garter snakes, male-on-male contact may allow some solitary males to thermoregulate and, therefore, survive...
...oops" theory. Among insects, same-sex sexual behavior is usually a case of mistaken identity. Male fruit flies, for instance, may romance other males because they lack a gene that enables them to distinguish between sexes. Even more surprising, male toads can't tell the difference between girl toads and boy toads, so males will routinely embrace other males, although the subordinate ones are equipped with a call that quickly results in the dominant male releasing. In other species, the "straight" males get tricked by other wily straight males who dress in animal drag: male goodeid fish, for instance, sometimes...
...plus-one theory. Among flour beetles, males routinely force themselves on other males. According to Bailey and Zuk, there's some evidence that sperm deposited during this male beetle rape is sometimes transferred to a female later on, increasing the chances that she will have offspring...