Albatross Leave Marriage for Hot Girl Summer
“In many socially monogamous species, divorce is a strategy used to correct for sub-optimal partnerships…”
The very beginning lines of a new study published in the Royal Society journal introduces us to two unnerving concepts:
- we are about to hear an animal love story tragedy, and
- scientists probably send devastating break-up texts.
Following a similar methodology to watching a season of Love Island, scientists observed albatross partnerships in the Falkland Islands for over a decade to investigate how environmental changes may affect avian “divorce” rate. Interestingly, there appears to be statistically significant correlation between rising “divorce” rate with infertility (we see you Henry the 8th) and warmer summers.
On average, the albatross divorce rate is 3.7% which is still a higher chance than the guy you are currently chatting with on hinge has at making it to the third date. Albatross “divorce” rate can jump to 7.7% in warmer summers, an almost doubling of the average rate.
Their “divorce” is characterised as either mate switching or an event of cheating from one partner. Contrary to popular opinion, birds do not get married as they have not developed metallurgy yet and can therefore not exchange rings.
“Environmentally driven divorce may therefore represent an overlooked consequence of global change.”
Despite the humour (my therapist says it’s a coping mechanism), overlooked consequences due to climate change can have serious consequences on our ecosystem. A lot of time is spent by environmentalists focusing on the mass extinction event we are currently experiencing. The loss of a species is a trauma to our planet with wide ripple effects on other species survival odds.
Disruptions to breeding patterns, like fowl speed dating, could cause fluctuations in a populations number of offspring…
which could cause fluctuations in how much fish they eat…
which affects other species which eat those fish…
then a seal population has less to eat..
and now we have fewer cute sea dogs (seals).
Conclusion: Increased divorce rates could potentially lead to similar ripple effects as increasing extinction.
(Disclaimer: This is a hypothetical scenario as I have no background in marine biology.)
As temperatures continue to rise, so will the heat of extramarital albatross affairs. We can only hope that we get climate change under control before some plucky entrepreneur starts offering albatross speciality training to marriage counsellors.
Some evidence that humans love dating reality shows no matter the species:
