I've read that some animals mate for life like Gibbon apes, wolves, termites, coyotes, barn owls, beavers, bald eagles, golden eagles, condors, swans, love birds, French angel fish, sand hill cranes, pigeons, red-tailed hawks, angler fish, prairie voles (a rodent), and black vultures are a few that mate for life. Of course, it depends on what you mean by "mate for life." These creatures do mate for life in the social sense of living together in pairs but they rarely stay strictly faithful. About 90 percent of the 9,700 bird species pair, mate, and raise chicks together some even return together to the same nest site year after year. Males, however, often raise other males’ offspring unknowingly. Black vultures, though, discourage infidelity. All nearby vultures attack any vulture caught philandering. Hmmm, now there's a thought.
Only about 3 percent of the 4,000 mammal species are monogamous, homosapians are not one of them. Beavers, otters, bats, wolves, some foxes, a few hoofed animals, and some primates live together in social pairs but dally sexually as much as birds do. Wolves, for example, are generally monogamous but also breed polygamously if the male is unrelated to the female and prey is plentiful. According to the Yellowstone Gray Wolf Restoration Program, they sometimes have more than one mate in a lifetime. This will happen "only if one mate dies, gets kicked out of the pack, or is physically unable to breed due to injury, illness, etc."
There is only on species that is absolutely monogamous. In the black darkness of the deep sea, the tiny male angler fish, one tenth the female’s size, detects and follows the scent trail of a female of his own species. Once found, he bites his chosen one and hangs on. His skin fuses to hers, their bodies grow together (he gets his food through a common blood supply and becomes essentially a sperm producing organ). They mate for life, a short life for the male, but it's still for life.
Why doesn't God make humans like the angler fish, without the biting and growing our bodies together of course and maybe not as ugly? I would settle for absolute monogamy and the for life part. I look at my parents, and both sets of grandparents as examples and wonder why they could do it and I could not. My parents have been married since 1965, my grandparents were married until "death do us part," 50 years after their wedding day. What has changed between then and now? Have our lives become too busy for love? No one is too "busy" for love, however I think some of us have become too "distracted" for love. We have become an "instant society." We want what we want the minute we ask for it. You can't demand love and expect to receive real love. Nor can you put it on a shelf and take it down when it is convenient. You have to nurture love, handled it with care, cherish love, and show love back. I know I forgot how fragile love can be. I just thought that it would always be there and that's not true. I woke up one day and love was gone. Now I am trying to find a new love. A new love of myself. I guess for now I will have to be my own love bird.
