This Month’s Featured Article

Animals in Love

By Published On: February 3rd, 2025

For those attracted here by the prurient possibilities suggested by this headline, settle down. Unless something goes completely off the rails, we will not be discussing, reviewing, or analyzing some raucous Thursday night orgy organized and participated in by the neighborhood cauldron of bats, romp of otters, or prickle of porcupines, although I suppose if it’s an orgy you have in mind, you could do worse than to populate it with that trio.

Recently, when the little doggy of the house appeared for all the world to have arrived at the final morning of her long and productive life, the big doggy of the house, who ordinarily is unmoved by much of anything other than sustenance and, well, sustenance, was perfectly beside himself with concern. “Fix her!,” he seemed to plead.

When she was able to return home several hours later, a hail Mary recovery plan (which seems to have worked) firmly in place, the big doggy was visibly moved. And that got little doggy’s and big doggy’s manservant to thinking. 

Monogamy and love

Will the pair of squirrels that earlier this morning were chasing one another around my yard be trading Valentine’s Day cards and cherry-filled chocolates? How about the fishers who live out creekside? I doubt that, since they hate everything. Okay, I know full well the pair of parakeets that lived out their lives in my office space were madly in love – when one, Boris, abruptly keeled over one fine morning a while back, you’d’ve thought the other, Natasha, had endured a bout of abject torture for about a week.  

Much ink has been spilled masticating over exactly how to understand and define love in animals. “Do animals fall in love?” is a popular theme. If you, for instance, see an albatross, which spends much of its life flying over oceans, returning to the same place year after year, perhaps 60 or more, to mate with the same albatross every time, complete with elaborate rituals, what is that?

“Monogamy has been observed in all kinds of animals, from birds to beetles,” notes Discover Magazine. “There’s not a perfect pattern to which species will be monogamous and which won’t, but it’s typically related to the way those species reproduce. For instance, if an animal’s babies need a lot of care, it’s beneficial for both parents to help out – think of helpless baby birds who require round-the-clock feeding, which both the male and female parent can provide. The benefits of co-parenting may have led these species to evolve monogamous mating systems.”

Mammalian love

A couple sentences later, we see: “‘The typical mammal system is, a male will mate with multiple females,’ says Alexander Ophir, a behavioral scientist and professor of psychology at Cornell University. But some female mammals, like big cats, can have multiple fathers for the same litter of cubs. ‘The response to that from a male point of view is, OK, well, I’m going to stick with this one female and keep all the other guys away,’ he says. At that point, the males might as well care for the offspring and pick a mate they don’t hate being around.’ Voilà, a potential evolutionary pathway for mammalian love.” Professor Ophir sums all that up with the observation that humans, as mammals that do fall in love, belong in the “weirdo” category.

A fair number of researchers I stumbled across indeed seem to think it’s not so much about roses and chocolates as it is a matter of pure practicality that leads an ordinary, everyday mammal, whatever that is, to enter their particulars into an online dating service and wait for the offers to come rolling in? Oops, I mean, to toddle off in search of a mate, regardless of whether that’s in a saloon or a church. But isn’t that, at the end of the day, what humans are up to? It’s all clear as a mud puddle on the heels of a July thunderstorm.

But let’s get back to the albatross and their relationships for a second. The Smithsonian points out that this bird’s dating habits “seem especially relatable to humans. These long-lived and highly endangered birds will court each other through ritual dances for years. Albatrosses are slow to reach sexual maturity, and some species even delay breeding for several years to learn specific mating rituals and to pick the perfect partner. The courtship behavior slows down once the pair bonds (an all too familiar aspect of human relationships) … So is it love? The biological reality is that albatrosses only lay a single egg a year. With both parents fully invested in chick survival, their genetic heritage is most likely to survive. It may seem like love, but with those low reproduction rates no parents can afford to be deadbeats.”

However, very few of us share a domicile with an albatross, as much as it may sound like a pretty decent life. The majority of us who cohabitate with a creature not human, tend to do so with dogs and cats and the like. Furry, cuddly things. In this household, that’s one that’s in tune with humans and one that’s in tune with, well, themselves, but we love them all anyhoo. And how do these critters feel about us? Does my doggy love me for my wonderful self or for the exquisite vittles I provide? 

The story of Greyfriars Bobby

Who’s not heard the story of Greyfriars Bobby or at least something similar? Let’s assume you’ve not. With an assist from Historic UK, here we go:

In 1850, John Gray arrived in Edinburgh. Unable to find work in his regular profession as a gardener, he instead joined the Edinburgh police force as a night watchman. For company through Scotland’s long winter nights, he got himself a partner, a wee Skye Terrier named Bobby. Together, John and Bobby were a familiar sight, trudging through the old cobbled streets of Edinburgh. Through thick and thin, winter and summer, they were faithful friends. John eventually died of tuberculosis and in February 1858 was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Bobby refused to leave his master’s grave, even in the worst of weather conditions and despite the many attempts of the gardener and keeper of Greyfriars to evict Bobby from the Kirkyard. 

“Bobby’s fame spread throughout Edinburgh,” notes Historic UK. “It is reported that almost on a daily basis the crowds would gather at the entrance of the Kirkyard waiting for the one o’clock gun that would signal the appearance of Bobby leaving the grave for his midday meal. Bobby would follow William Dow, a local joiner and cabinet maker, to the same coffee house that he had frequented with his now dead master, where he was given a meal. The kind folk of Edinburgh took good care of Bobby, but still he remained loyal to his master. For fourteen years the dead man’s faithful dog kept constant watch and guard over the grave until his own death in 1872.” Does your doggy or kitty love you? Of course they do!

Stay together…?

Along comes Dr. C.M. (Claudia) Vinke, associate professor of veterinary medicine at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, to opine: “The question is whether animals experience love in the same way as humans, but we must acknowledge the fact that they are definitely sexually motivated and very capable of forming stable social bonds. Among animals, there are monogamous relationships of dozens of years as well and females in particular have clear preferences with regard to their partners. What we do not know, however, is how extensive such complex feelings of love are in this respect. Still, it is certain that it leads to sufficient motivation to opt for actively staying with a partner.”

Yeah, but. Does staying together for a lengthy period of time with one partner equal love, one might ask. That seems a bit shaky. Not to be Naysayer Nate, but seeing as how we are all experts at this “love” thing, take a look for a minute at the long-term relationships engaged in by those in your circle of humans. Stable as the gold bullion you grabbed at Costco that’s now stashed in your attic (personally, I might consider stashing it in the bottom of my laundry basket)? Maybe they’re not quite so stable? How would you ever know, anyway? 

I reckon we all are aware of those who have remained together for decades suffering from inertia and little else, while others in that same timeframe may be insanely crazy about one another, or at least happy and content and ready to eventually sail off into the Great Beyond still hitched, and finally there are those couples who could do without the entire shebang, immediately if not sooner. This leaves me with a question: What, in light of this picture, makes animals all that odd?

Let’s dispatch our intrepid reporter back to Dr. Vinke for this one. 

“In the animal kingdom, wedding bouquets are offered and beautiful structures built for the partner,” she writes. “These acts have all the trappings of love! Yet what exactly is love? Even for humans, it is a vaguely described phenomenon consisting of various aspects. There is the longing to be together (forming a bond), being in love itself (a period of no inhibitions in order to enter into an intimate relationship with someone), and sexual cravings (lust).”

As previously noted, it’s all clear as mud. 

Southern Royal Albatross, diomedea melanophris, Pair Courting, Antarctica