The idea of monogamy hasn’t so much been tried and found wanting, as found difficult and left untried.
— G. K. Chesterton
The surprise box-office hit of 2005 was a film called March of the Penguins. The second-biggest money-making documentary to date, viewers were touched by its depiction of the extreme dedication penguin couples showed in nurturing their adorable penguin pups. Many viewers seemed to see their own marriages reflected in the penguins’ sacrifice for their offspring and for one another. As one reviewer put it, “It’s impossible to watch the thousands of penguins huddled together against the icy Antarctic blasts . . . without feeling a tug of anthropomorphic kinship.”
Churches across the United States reserved cinemas for private screenings for their congregations. Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, told a conference of young Republicans, “Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. The dedication of these birds is amazing.” Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films, declared the penguins “model parents,” continuing, “What they go through to look after their children is phenomenal, and no parent who sees it will ever complain about the school run. There are parallels with human nature and it’s moving to see.”
Ainley reports having witnessed cases of penguin ménages-à-trois, in which two males take turns caring for a particular female’s egg, as well as “penguin prostitution,” where females receive prime nest-building pebbles in exchange for a bit of penguin poontang.
But unlike the birds themselves, penguin sexuality is not all black and white. That perfect penguin pair, that “ideal example of monogamy,” those “model parents” are monogamous only as long as it takes to get their little one hatched and into the frigid Antarctic water — a little less than a year. If you’ve seen the film, you know that with all the trekking back and forth across the windswept ice and huddling against raging Antarctic blizzards, there’s not much in the way of extramarital temptation anyway. Once Junior is swimming with the other eleven-month-olds — the penguin equivalent of kindergarten — fidelity is forgotten, and Mom and Dad are back on the penguin prowl. With a breeding adult typically living thirty years or more, these “model parents” have at least two dozen “families” in a lifetime. That is an “ideal example of monogamy”?
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