Why do birds divorce? York University professor Bridget Stutchbury looks to answer this bizarre question.
In her book The Bird Detective: Investigating the Secret Lives of Birds, Professor Stutchbury studies the sexual activities and social behaviors of birds and has found that they are much more sophisticated than was once believed. Dr. Stutchbury is the Canadian Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology at the York University department of Biology. She and her post-doc student, Bonnie Wolenden, worked with Acadian flycatchers and discovered females were fertilized by males living long distances away.
Using radio-tracking technology, the two researchers discovered that it was the male birds who snuck away from their nests in order to mate with these females. In the bird populations, divorce rates vary with some bird species who stay with one partner their whole lives and others that divorce frequently. When asked about the reason for this separation, Stutchbury replied that there are multiple hypotheses, one being that the bird finds they are behaviorally or genetically in conflict with its partner, and the other being that the bird believes it can simply do better and find a more suitable partner.
Wait. Do better? That sounds like your average case of human adultery right there. Well, it basically is. It even affects the children. A bird can abandon its offspring in order to get a new start with a more favourable partner. Birds have even been shown to favour certain genders in their offspring. Especially under conditions of environmental stress or low food availability, birds favour their male offspring.
Other than causing raised eyebrows, these bizarre behavioural traits displayed by these birds may have a key role in helping us protect these species. Stutchbury has published numerous other books on the subject of avian behavior including Silence of the Songbirds: How We are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can do to Save Them.
The Bird Detective: Investigating the Secret Lives of Birds was released in April 2010 and is available for purchase.
Source: http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=14664
