Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of 'Queer' Animals",
Rather than continuing to pose nature/culture dualisms that closet queer animals as well as animal cultures, and rather than attempting to locate the truth of human sexuality within the already written book of nature, we can think of queer desire as part of an emergent universe of a multitude of naturecultures.
Gay animals? It's true—think of everyone's favorite literal lovebirds, the gay penguin daddies of the Kent Zoo. We double dog dare you not to "Awww" out loud when you check out that link.
In fact there's a huge, encyclopedia-like book by a scientist titled Biological Exuberance that chronicles same-sex romantic and sexual activity in a bunch of species. In the fantastic article that this quote comes from, Alaimo puts these phenomena in context of both science and culture.
Let's back up a minute—this word, "naturecultures" – what is that? Did someone leave out a space here? Since when do you get to run two wordstogether? Turns out this word comes from another of our theorists, Donna Haraway. "Naturecultures" is a useful term because it reinforces the idea that we can never think nature and culture apart. They are always together, like two sides of the same sheet of paper—tough to separate you know?
That's what Alaimo is talking about when she talks about nature/culture dualisms in the first sentence above, and this idea that we should think of queer animals not in any particular way but as part of a plural, big world in which lots of things can happen—things we never expected, or things that seem to go against a lot of people's preconceived ideas.