A respected British anthropologist has suggested homosexuality can be explained by a process which causes adults to retain juvenile traits.

In his latest book, The Naked Man: A study of the Male Body, Desmond Morris says that ‘neoteny’ (the biological term for a phenomenon where infantile or juvenile characteristics are continued into adulthood) may cause men to be gay.

He also claims that gay men are more inventive and creative than heterosexuals, because they are more likely to retain the mental agility and imagination of childhood.

“The playfulness of childhood is continued with certain people into adulthood. This is very much a positive,” Morris told UK newspaper The Sunday Times.

“Adult playfulness means that certain people, often a fairly large proportion of them gay, are more inventive and curious than heterosexuals.”

“Gays have in general made a disproportionately greater contribution to life than non-gays; the creative gay has very much advanced Planet Earth,” he added.

Morris’ theory has been criticised by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London.

“It’s arts faculty science to say that gays are neotenous,” Jones told The Sunday Times. “What of somebody like Pablo Picasso, who was a hugely creative man and yet was obviously decidedly heterosexual?”

Morris, whose 1967 bestseller The Naked Ape made international headlines for comparing human behaviour with the instinctive behaviour of animals, countered Professor Jones’ argument by pointing to famous gay artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Cole Porter and Oscar Wilde.

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