The love that daren't squawk its name: When animals come out of the closet

[IndianaGreen]

The love that daren't squawk its name: When animals come out of the closet

Inside the science of same-sex animal pairings

By Jon Mooallem

Saturday, 1 May 2010

The laysan albatross is a downy seabird with a seven-foot wingspan and a notched, pale-yellow beak. Every November, a small colony of albatrosses assembles at a place called Kaena Point, overlooking the Pacific at the foot of a volcanic range, on the northwestern tip of Oahu, Hawaii. Each bird has spent the past six months in solitude, ranging over open water as far north as Alaska, and has come back to the breeding ground to reunite with its mate. Albatrosses can live to be 60 or 70 years old and typically mate with the same bird every year, for life. Their "divorce rate", as biologists term it, is among the lowest of any bird.

When I visited Kaena Point in November, the first birds were just returning. There are about 120 breeding albatrosses in the colony, and gradually, each will arrive and feel out the crowd for the one other particular albatross it has been waiting to have sex with again. Once together, pairs will copulate and collaboratively incubate a single egg for 65 days.

Speaking on Oahu a few years ago as First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush – the wife of George W – praised Laysan albatross couples for making lifelong commitments to one another. But Lindsay C Young, a biologist who studies the Kaena Point colony, told me: "They were supposed to be icons of monogamy: one male and one female. But I wouldn't assume that what you're looking at is a male and a female."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-love-that-darent-squawk-its-name-when-animals-come-out-of-the-closet-1957085.html