Monday, October 29, 2007

Love, Or Something Like It


You know when your trying to do research on the internet -- say, hypothetically, on the sexual escapades of Blue Footed Boobies -- and all you can find is the same limited details, and everywhere you find them they're worded in such a strikingly similar manner that you can't help but think that the internet is more incestuous than the Hapsburgs and that eventually all recorded human knowledge will have originated one night out of the keyboard imaginings of a geeky eight-year-old whose parents still have him sheltered from porn? It'll all just be writ from above like the days of Moses.
And in this grand tradition, we bring you the mating habits of the Blue Footed Booby!
Blue-footed boobies have an elaborate courtship ritual that entertains onlookers. Once a male booby has chosen a mating spot, he repeatedly raises his beak into the air in a motion called "skypointing," to signal his readiness to females. The attracted female joins him, mirroring the skypointing, and he begins to circle her with high steps, flexing and extending his wings. During this dramatic dance one of the birds will place a stick or stone onto the ground, indicating the spot designated for nesting. Nests are located close to shore and are often seen by passing tour boats.
Skypointing. Yeah, I guess we kind of do that too.


1 comment:

Frank said...

"...the internet is more incestuous than the Hapsburgs." I'm totally in love with you now, hobbes, just for that line alone! As someone with completely too much knowledge of European royal genealogy, I've often marveled how the Hapsburgs in particular, but most every royal house after the Reformation in particular, thought it was a good idea to marry first cousin to first cousin, even niece to uncle, generation after generation. I mean, didn't that jaw at least clue them in that maybe they needed some new blood????