Post #14630

Magpie Goose: Immoral, but effective. How did harem families help you survive? If ordinary geese had social networks, they would collectively poison the magpie geese. After all, instead of building normal, conventional families, they are engaged in some kind of harem obscenity! Just imagine: for one male there are two, or even three females. And they are often sisters! Strange black and white geese don't just make strange families. They live in bustling communities throughout Australia and Southern New Guinea. Colonies of thousands of birds are found along river banks and in the middle of swamps, and their inhabitants scream loudly for kilometers around. And if you hear magpie geese, it’s better not to come close, because the geese are doing absolutely unacceptable things there. They sit on trees and even build nests on them, which anseriformes are generally not supposed to do! Despite the fact that the magpie-goose is also an anseriform bird, their evolutionary lines diverged from real geese a very long time ago. About 70 million years ago. So the “goose” in the name is more of an external impression than an indication of a close relationship. This is a kind of “living fossil” among Anseriformes. But if you look at their dubious families with a more sober look and do not involve human morality in this, then the geese are doing surprisingly well. They do not divide children into theirs and others and take care of them equally. Although the male builds the nest alone, the rest of the responsibilities are divided equally between the parents. While one parent sits on the nest or looks after the babies, the rest fly around and get food: stems of aquatic plants, cereal seeds and other relatively high-calorie greens. In the arid regions of Australia, they sometimes have to fly several kilometers from home. And in this case, the more parents there are, the more time each individual can spend searching for food. Именно в тяжёлых жизненных условиях и кроется причина создания странных семей. Not all magpies suit Swedish families, but in regions with a lack of food and/or an abundance of enemies, such families are in the majority. Indeed, in this case, the death of one of the parents does not lead to the death of the nest, the rest will be able to raise offspring, and the legacy of the dead bird will continue to live. And if the living conditions are close to comfortable, then in most nests there live 1 male, 1 female and 5-14 goslings mature. It turns out that there is no question of any debauchery here, because all they care about is the survival of their offspring. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot