If you think it’s only humans who engage in extramarital affairs, think again. Animals have needs, too, and sometimes they also look elsewhere if their needs are not met. And yes, they feel hurt, too, when the love of their life cheats on them. National Geographic managed to capture footage of such a scene, when a male penguin came home to find his wife cheating on another penguin. And he didn’t take it lying down.
Watch the video below:
A fight breaks out when a husband comes home and finds his wife with another penguin. pic.twitter.com/9ejYGcJ5TJ
— Nat Geo Channel (@NatGeoChannel) November 4, 2016
Penguins have similar mating behaviors, but each species has its own quirk. Adélie penguins follow a rigorous courtship ritual where they bow, preen, and call to each other. Similar to magellanic penguins, they mate for life. However, if a female penguin notices that her mate is not helpful in raising their chicks, she will often find new ones.
Penguins also have unusual habits. George Murray Levick, a scientist who journeyed with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, witnessed the entire breeding cycle of the Adelie penguin and found male penguins copulating with fellow males and dead female penguins. He also found male penguins forcing themselves on females and chicks, sometimes killing them. Levick initially wrote his observations in Greek so that only educated individuals would understand, but he would later write the Natural History of the Adélie Penguin in English. Hw separated the part about the depravity he saw and published it as Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin, which only a few experts saw.
It was later uncovered at the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom, and was displayed as part of an exhibit in 2012.
A separate study done in 1998 by University of Cambridge researcher Fiona Hunter discovered that Adélie penguins also traded sex for stones, an important part of their nests.
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