An albatross lady knows she flies fastest alone.
"They give the term "hot and bothered" new meaning.”
Enter the first extreme athlete of the animal world we will cover here on Thirsty Science: albatross. Albatrosses are large marine seabirds that live 50-60 years, enduring a protracted, awkward adolescent period that involves much learning of an elegant courtship dance used to seduce potential mates. They are socially monogamous, a delicate term scientists use to avoid casting aspersion whilst acknowledging that dalliances outside the nest do indeed occur.
Albatrosses spend most of the year at sea. They are profoundly impressive flyers: a cyclone provides just the sort of wind that literally floats their boat. An albatross female exerts the same amount of energy flying over the Southern Ocean (which sits at a latitude called the Roaring Forties by sailors) as she does sitting on her nest: not a lot. She is built to fly in punishing winds.
Albatross return to the same breeding ground each breeding season, and to their mate for life. The typical “divorce” rate among albatross breeding pairs is 1-3%. But a group of scientists who studied 15,500 black-browed Albatross breeding pairs in the Falkland Islands for 15 years recently concluded that in hotter years, that albatross “divorce” rate kicks up to 8%.
When the water’s warmer, fish migrate north, and albatross have to spend much more time finding fish. A divorce is initiated by the female, at the beginning of breeding season: her male mate arrives at the nest first, and she arrives later, bedraggled after a hard winter searching for food, and simply chooses not to join him on it. Albatross males in divorces often rebound far less frequently than females. And females often move in with the neighbor.
Anonymous readers respond:
“Get these girls a fan! Or maybe save the planet and keep that ocean cool?”
“As the song goes: how can I miss you when you won't go away?”
“If human partners only spent 10 days together a year, we'd probably have a lower divorce rate too.”
“When it's hot, my husband can fuck right off.”