Despite
our liberated ideals and marriage-related statistics, there yet remains an
ideal of monogamous love lasting forever like a De Beers cartel diamond. Many
bird species are long renowned as symbols of lifelong devotion and have been
traditionally popular in love iconography.
It is
said that if you want monogamy, you should marry a swan.
However,
modern research shows that many socially monogamous species nevertheless engage
in extra-pair copulations, with DNA testing revealing, for example, that 1 in 6
black swan cygnets are not fathered by the resident male.
True
devotion, then, is demonstrated in schistosomes and diplozoons. In the lives of
these parasitic flatworms, males and females find each other "and the two
shall become one flesh", the pair remaining physically locked in mating
position for the rest of their lives.
Schistosoma
mansoni
Diplozoon
paradoxum
Lovebirds this Valentine's
Day who are ready to enter a new level of commitment could consider one day
becoming loveworms instead, exchanging "I ♥ You" for "I χ You."
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