Sad reason penguins get divorced (but may regret it later)
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Fertility troubles are a common stressor for couples, and it seems that penguins are no exception. A ten-year study found that although they do often ‘mate for life’, like humans, this doesn’t stop individuals from looking elsewhere. Researchers found that ‘divorce’ was relatively common in the colony of Little penguins they studied on Philip Island over 13 breeding seasons.
![[A pair of Fairy Penguins (Eudyptula minor), the smallest of the penguins, on Phillip Island in southern Australia. It is also known as the Blue Penguin or the Little Penguin.]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_236646746-f9aa.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The secret love lives of the cute birds showed them to be a bunch of cheating wife-swappers, which just goes to show. Splits were more common after a disappointing year for hatching young, suggesting that one or both of the pair decided to try their luck at becoming parents with someone else.
Study author Richard Reina, of Monash University, said: ‘In good times, they largely stick with their partners, although there’s often a bit of hanky-panky happening on the side.’. ‘However, after a poor reproductive season they may try to find a new partner for the next season to increase their breeding success.’.
The sand may look softer on the other side, but the stats are rarely in their favour. Overall breeding success in seasons after more penguins ditched their partners was lower, indicating the plan of leaving for a bigger flock of chicks didn’t really pan out.
The study in Ecology and Evolution found that penguins are unexpectedly perfidious. Of around a thousand pairs studied, there were 250 ‘divorces’ after ten years, while others were ‘widowed’. For context, in the latest Census data, only one in five Brits who got married in 2012 were divorced within ten years (though admittedly, penguins have a significantly shorter lifespan).
