this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Penguins ❤️ (mander.xyz)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Are we sure that penguins can actually tell each other apart by gender and it's not just pairing up with whoever's most convenient and some of them get lucky?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Penguins form life long relationships and don't even rebound if their partner dies. Pretty sure they can tell genders apart

[–] Tudsamfa 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Contrary to popular belief, Emperor Penguins do not mate for life. They are serially monogamous, only having 1 mate per year, but between years fidelity is at around 15%.

I think this means that they only choose last years partner 15% of the time. Still higher than random chance, but in no way dependant on their partner.

Was looking up something else on Wikipedia and stumbled onto this fact. I know this is not exactly related to the point you wanted to make, but I might as well share it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

So my Spanish teacher was wrong. I hope she didn't make up the language, too

[–] Zorque 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I dont see how the former links to the latter.

I'd imagine being able to differentiate sex (I doubt they have a concept of gender as we understand it) is an evolutionary necessity, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

It's no definite proof, it is just very unlikely that they can remember their former partner but can't differentiate between sexes. They look all the same to us but not to them.

Someone else debunked my comment but they still more likely go to their old partner so they seem to remember them

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