Birders
Related: About this forumIntroducing A Divorce Rate For Birds, And Guess Which Bird Never, Ever Divorces?
by Robert Krulwich
"There is love. And then there's albatross love.
In his new book, , Noah Strycker says albatrosses have a knack for coupling. "These globe trotters, who mate for life and are incredibly faithful to their partners, just might have the most intense love affairs of any animal on our planet," he writes.
Noah knows "love" is a word normally reserved for humans. Technically, what albatrosses do is "pair bond." But call it what you will, he says "to see what real devotion is like, you need to spend some quality time with an albatross."
They are seabirds. They spend 95 percent of their time sailing through the air for thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of miles. They fish. They rest on the oceans' surface. They can go for years never seeing land. But they are born on dry land."
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/04/22/305582368/introducing-a-divorce-rate-for-birds-and-guess-which-bird-never-ever-divorces
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)my answer is always an albatross. And that is part of the reason.
The reason for the devotion could be that they spend most of the year alone, away from their mate, and only meet up again at mating season. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 26, 2014, 05:42 PM - Edit history (1)
"But typically the chick "spends a full nine months sitting alone ... in its nest, most of the time in quiet contemplation of its surroundings since it has no siblings.""
I also had no idea that they lived that long...65 years!
Avoid the flamingos!
mopinko
(70,103 posts)really amazing. they built a huge fence to keep the feral cats and rats out of the nesting area.
amazing to see, but when you know that they used to blot out the sight of the rocks they were on, seeing the couple hundred that we saw was haunting.