The Pointer UW-Stevens Point Student Newspaper
Valentine’s Day is nearing, so it may come as a shock that our symbols of love are not entirely faithful.
Evidence of infidelity within the love bird community should be a sign that it is time to replace our representatives of love. How about cockroaches?
According to The National Science Foundation, DNA fingerprinting in the early 1990s led to a discovery in birds’ sexual behavior.
“It was believed that 90 percent of all birds were truly monogamous,” said Sarah Jane Alger, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “We now know that 90 percent partake in what is known as social monogamy.”
It is also known that 5 to 6 percent of paired swans end in divorce for unknown reasons.
The cheating between a pair is known as extra pair copulation, and the duped male may be cuckolded, or father children not his own.
Alger said true monogamy refers to a lifelong pair with no extra pair copulation, whereas social monogamy refers to pairs involved in short bouts of infidelity while remaining lifetime partners. Penguins and swans practice this.
Humans are thought to exhibit facultative monogamy, a subset of social monogamy. Alger explained that this means we create long-term relationships with a significant other, but have several of these pairings throughout our lives.
In fact, no mammal species is truly monogamous. Most are promiscuous and have many partners throughout a lifetime, like tigers and bears, according to The National Science Foundation.
The idea of social monogamy somewhat challenges the strict definition many have of everlasting love and may be the reason for high divorce rates.
Heidi Weber, a psychology major, has an idea of why this form of monogamy may be beneficial to humans.
“I feel that we meet a number of different soulmates throughout our lifetime to help us grow and mature in different parts of our lives,” Weber said.
However, not all pairings are strictly tied to one form of monogamy. Alger believes monogamy falls on a spectrum and some species or individuals are more or less faithful than others.
The spectrum becomes obvious when someone attends a 50th anniversary and afterward decides to pick up a tabloid in the grocery checkout line highlighting the latest cheaters in Hollywood. The same contrast can also be found in socially monogamous penguins.
For those saddened by the cheating penguins, there is still hope a truly monogamous pair exists.
If nearly the entirety of the animal kingdom is lacking true monogamy, what species should represent true love? How about cockroaches?
Two species of roaches never partake in extra pair copulation once they have decided on each other. Mating is strictly between the couple and, like birds, roaches also have a type of “mating dance” or courtship display.
The love roaches can be found, “rocking, shaking, waggling, trembling, vibrating, pushing, bumping, wing pumping, wing fluttering, pivot-trembling, anterior-posterior jerking, hissing, whistling, tapping and stridulating” to attract a mate, according to “Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History.”
Vincent Landowski, a student, said roaches as our new love symbol makes sense. Love can be scary, unpredictable and is not always as it seems.
“They are a love that can survive a nuclear holocaust,” he said.
Not everyone has missed the romance of the cockroach, though. The Bronx Zoo in New York offers a Valentine’s Day gift naming one of their hissing cockroaches. This atypical gift idea can be found on bronxzoo.com/roach.
Whether someone is a love bird or a love roach, choosing what to do on Valentine’s Day is ultimately a personal choice, as is the process of choosing potential mates.
For more interesting animal behavior articles, visit Alger’s blog at the-scorpion-and-the-frog.blogspot.com.
Nicolette Ratz
Contributor
nratz112@uwsp.edu
