More same-sex couples -- in the albatross family
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Those of us who live in California know we are in the midst of a culture war over gay marriage. First the state Supreme Court overturns a ban on gay marriage. Next, an initiative barring gay marriage gets enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot. It’s enough to give the state a collective case of whiplash.
In the meantime, those who remain focused on the sanctity of marriage between and a man and a woman and the way traditional couples care for their children might want to read about the Laysan albatrosses of Oahu. The New York Times reports:
Cooperative breeding, in which an animal assists in caring for offspring that are not its own, is often found in nature. But researchers in Hawaii have uncovered a case that is not so common, involving long-term pairs of unrelated birds of the same sex. Lindsay C. Young of the University of Hawaii and colleagues studied a colony of Laysan albatrosses on Oahu from 2004 to 2007. These birds are monogamous, and both parents participate in raising a single hatchling. The researchers conducted genetic tests and monitored the pairs’ reproductive success. They report in Biology Letters that nearly one-third of the 125 pairs consisted of two unrelated females, and half of these stayed together for the duration of the study. The researchers note that for female-female pairing like this to occur, usually there has to be a surplus of females in the population. That is the case for the Oahu colony, which is young and has been growing by immigration, with most of the newcomers being female.
Perhaps one of the couples will get its own storybook, like the two male penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo that adopted a fertilized egg and raised the chick as their own. The book was titled ‘And Tango Makes Three.’ Earlier this year, the book found itself (again) on the American Library Assn.’s list of most challenged books.
-- Alice Short