Friday, June 13, 2008

The Baby Albatross With Two Mommies

This story is from a few weeks ago but it's quite fascinating. The Laysan Albatross (common in Hawaii and throughout the N. Pacific) commonly experiences a shortage of males in its population. The albatross, however, needs a pair to nest and raise babies. These birds have figured out a clever solution - females will pair up and take turns watching a nest during the breeding season. ScienceDaily notes that this is a "rare occurrence in the Animal Kingdom" and this particular albatross is one of the few species that exhibits this behavior. It all comes down to evolution. If your population naturally tends toward having more females, the population can raise more young if the extra females pair up to raise young instead of having strictly male-female pairs. Females that don't pair up to raise young, well, they can't raise any young and their genes would not survive. DARWIN!!

Read more about this phenomenon here.

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