Well, who would have guessed it? While we hold dear to the idea of mating for life (that is, marriage), we know that those with real means often don't really mean it. The high and mighty seem often to fly the cooped-up feeling of the one-and-only. But that seemed so, well, a product of being spoiled in our doting culture, a violation of the more fundamental urge to stay that the rest of us have to (try to) live by. And lifelong fidelity is often the rule in Nature, one that our innocent lessor species tend to keep.
Not anymore! The BBC reports the shocking discovery of a pair of swans who did not honor their vows and not because death doth them did part. No, they both flew the coop, left town and returned (apparently shamelessly) with other partners, to the waterfowl sanctuary where they've been monitored. This shocking 'divorce' stirred the interest of the staff, who dutifully reported it.
What these miscreants show is that fair and fowl, in man and beast, is not necessarily hard-wired. Irreconcilable difference can arise, even among the bird-brained. Either that or, having watched us decadent humans gawking at them all the time (often with different partners), they might as well join the crowd.
The two newly-weddeds seemed quite happy, according to the story, to ignore their ex-es, swimming along and giving each other the cold-wing, as if they didn't exist. It gives new meaning, of beginning rather than ending, to the phrase 'swan song'.
Notch one more for hard-wiring in Nature (not!)
So Gibbons was right after all, even for our age: "More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."
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