THE BLUE FOOTED BOOBY DANCE:
“I’m too sexy for my feet,” the Blue Footed Boobies seem to be singing as the do their courtship “dance.» They lift one and then the other maturity. Isn›t that what we look for when we want to settle down? Boobies share baby duties, so this is important. Extra points for Boobies water shoes kept exclaiming. Her girlfriend winced. They were from Portland. Enough said.
SIZE MATTERS FOR THE GALAPAGOS THE GALAPAGOS HAWKS ARE FRIGATE: POLYANDROUS: “steal” from other species. The Boobies are their vending machines. Pull a Booby tail, it spits up a Frigate meal.
They share one woman. Three or four sit on a branch cheering the one going at it, waiting for their turn. To their credit, they all raise whoever’s child it turns out to be. Only on one Island, Espanola, are there monogamous hawks. Possibly, we wondered, since Espanola was formed before the other islands, their hawks are older and more traditional? Fueled by Chilean wine one night on the Ecoventura, a girl confessed her boyfriend of three years had adopted an openly “polyandrous lifestyle” when they broke up. She was also from Portland.
LONESOME GEORGE, ON THE OTHER HAND, COULDN’T RISE TO THE OCCASION:
Poor Lonesome George: seemingly the only animal not doing it in the Galapagos. He was the last male Pinta Island tortoise. But, he just didn’t know what to do with the ladies. The Darwin Institute actually put a 21 inch TV, showing tortoises humping, into his pen. The tortoise porn didn’t work. Scientists started looking around the world and found a more studly Galapagos Tortoise in the San Diego Zoo.
Resident March 2013