I was watching a little show on Sunday, about Hummingbirds (And in HD! It was very pretty). But the host said something that hit on a pet peeve of mine. So, let me ask you all, what is half of 40°C?
A lesser annoyance is how they treat the bird breeding systems. They presented a single view, where males are serial breeders, and females provide sole provisioning. This is a huge disservice to the massive diversity of systems, which span from social monogamy to promiscuity. It would also be a great time to discuss polyandry - that's a situation that is incredibly rare in mammals, where it's the males who are the most choosy. It typically arises because the male investment (in egg care) are greater than producing the eggs. So males choose who they want to breed with, and females go about recruiting multiple males to care for their young in various nests.
At least they didn't wax fanatical about how wonderfully monogamous they are.
3 comments:
The Australian bird Jacana is a case in point - it's the male who takes care of raising the chicks while the female lives the life of Riley...
I love those birds in general. Not only do they take polyandry to an extreme (In addition to other cool behaviour), but they're gorgeous. I used to have a picture of a Comb-Crested Jacana in my last office.
Half of 40C! HAHAHAHAHA. Such silly people.
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