Lesbian albatrosses to raise chick

RIGHT: There are about 140 royal albatrosses on the colony. This season 17 chicks have hatched from 17 fertile eggs, a rare 100 per cent success rate Photo: ALAMY

Two female royal albatrosses at a New Zealand breeding colony have successfully incubated a chick.

By Ben Leach
Published: 8:02AM GMT
03 Feb 2010

The father, one of several males at the Taiaroa Head Royal Albatross Centre on the South Island’s Otago Peninsula, appears to have disappeared, according to the centre managers.

"It's quite unusual in the albatross population here at Taiaroa Head to have two females mating together," Lyndon Perriman, the colony's head ranger, told Television New Zealand.

Taiaroa Head – the only mainland albatross breeding colony in the world – has recorded only two previous instances of females setting up a nest together in the past 70 years.

Sam Inder, the manager of the centre, said: "It's an unusual situation because we've had a triangle with one male and two females for the past couple of years, and obviously that hasn't been terribly conducive to getting on with a breeding programme.

“This year the male left the trio, but obviously not before he had mated with one of the females."

The male has not been seen since, and Mr Inder told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "My personal view would be having to live with two women might be just a bit demanding."

Lyndon Perriman, a ranger with New Zealand's Department of Conservation, said that the royal albatross females would raise their chick exactly the same as any male-female pair would.

For the next six months the new parents will take turns to alternately guard and feed the chick, with one protecting it from predators while the other goes out to sea to forage for food several hundred kilometres away. They swap the roles every two days.

“They need to have a very strong bond, because when they are sitting on the eggs they can sit there for a week or 10 days waiting for the partner to come back, so they need to have a good partner to rely on,” Mr Perriman told The Times.

There are about 140 royal albatrosses on the colony with wingspans of nearly 10 feet. This season 17 chicks have hatched from 17 fertile eggs, a rare 100 per cent success rate.

Tourism Dunedin is now canvassing for a name for the chick.

It is not the only same-sex pairing within the animal world on the Otago Peninsula, just south of Dunedin. Currently, two male yellow-eyed penguins – an endangered species like the royal albatross – are incubating an egg.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7144393/Lesbian-albatrosses-to-raise-chick.html