A new documentary narrated and co-produced by Elliot Page explores the prevalence of same-sex relationships and gender fluidity in the animal world.

The film, Second Nature, directed by Drew Denny, profiles scientists who have spent their lives researching the over 1,500 animal species that engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting, change sex, and form matriarchies in the wild.

The film also delves into the fact that these occurrences are widely underreported — or often not reported at all — in mainstream science and research.

Denny and Page sat down with PEOPLE exclusively to discuss the project and why they felt compelled to share this information with the world.

"To have this real, thorough investigatory piece about the reality of this information, the reality of what has been left out and what we've not been taught. And I think that sense of growing up as a queer kid and feeling alone — you're carrying these bricks of shame, and there's such implications and consequences in terms of censorship and erasure," Page, 39, says.

"And this idea that nature is organized around a cis heteronormative system is just completely false, and one of my absolute favorite lines in the documentary is when [ecologist and evolutionary biologist] Joan [Roughgarden] says, 'Well, quite frankly, it's just a quaint little myth.' ”

Denny, 41, says she first became aware of the phenomenon while reading Roughgarden's 2004 book Evolution’s Rainbow a number of years ago. “Learning about queerness in nature, and learning about matriarchal lesbian bonobos, and sex-changing fish, and gender-queer chimps, it’s what did it for me,” she explains.

“It's what flipped the switch finally to being like, ‘Oh, like, there isn't anything wrong with me,’ ” Denny, a queer woman who grew up in a conservative home in Texas, adds.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5861033&forum_id=2...id#49846780)