What are examples of birds that mate for life?
“It might be a treasured value in many human cultures, but monogamy is rare in the animal kingdom at large. Of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals, only 3 to 5 percent are known to form lifelong pair bonds. This select group includes beavers, otters, wolves, some bats and foxes and a few hoofed animals. And even the creatures that do pair and mate for life occasionally have flings on the side. Some, like the wolf, waste little time finding a new mate if their old one dies or can no longer sexually perform. Staying faithful can be a struggle for most animals. For one, males are hardwired to spread their genes and females try to seek the best dad for their young. Also, monogamy is costly because it requires an individual to place their entire reproductive investment on the fitness of their mate. Putting all their eggs in one basket means there’s a lot of pressure on each animal to pick the perfect mate, which, as humans knows, can be tricky. Because of recent revelations from animal stu
Birds that may mate for life are swans, geese, most hawks, eagles and falcons, most parrots, albatrosses, ravens, pigeons and doves, and more. But some of these will find a new mate if one of the dies and some may also occasionally ‘cheat’. And through DNA testing of chicks, they do find that often, even though a pair is bonded for ‘life’, hens do get bred by other males quite often. But the pair do stay together and raise the chicks. There are more birds that are monogamous species than not, though some species switch mates more often than others. Most migratory songbirds find a new mate every year. Relatively few bird species are polygamous (males mate with many females), and just a few are polyandrous (females mate with many males).
