Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Family Values Pt. II

So... this is embarrassing but the video I posted last night doesn't seem to do anything. Here's the link for anyone who was crushed when it didn't come up. It's basically Penn & Teller, as far as I am concerned the best Libertarian magician/comedians out there today, sending up the titular bullshit surrounding the traditional American family structure. Being a Mormon with four wives, I find this a refreshing take on things. Penn Jilette was also the mastermind behind the Aristocrats last year for anyone who is in the market for a well-made documentary-esque exploration of a durrty joke. The rest of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! can be found on Google Video pretty easily if you want to see more.

After you viddy the video, read the following bulletin my friend Nathalie coincidentally posted on MySpace last night that supplements these ideas:

have you ever wondered what animals mate for life?

gibbon apes, wolves, termites, coyotes, barn owls, beavers, bald eagles, golden eagles, condors, swans, brolga cranes, french angel fish, sandhill cranes, pigeons, prions (a seabird), red-tailed hawks, anglerfish, ospreys, 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 returning together to the same nest site year after year. males, however, often raise other males offspring unknowingly. dna testing reveals that the social-pair male did not father 10, 20, and sometimes 40 percent of the chicks.

black vultures, though, discourage infidelity. all nearby vultures attack any vulture caught philandering.

only about 3 percent of the 4,000 mammal species are monogamous (and homo sapiens isnt one of them). beavers, otters, bats, wolves, some foxes, a few hoofed animals, and some primates live together in social pairs but dally sexually 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. moreover, they sometimes have more than one mate in a lifetime, says dan stahler, biologist at the yellowstone gray wolf restoration program run by the national park service. this happens "if one mate dies, gets kicked out of the pack, or is physically unable to breed due to injury, illness, etc."

one species is absolutely monogamous. in the black darkness of the deep sea, the tiny male anglerfish (perhaps one tenth the females 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.

source: http://www.wonderquest.com/animal-mate-for-life.htm

Anyways, moving on, if any of this seems stoopid/boring, it's because I don't really know who's going to read this (if anybody), and therefore am merely flowing on stuff that I am thinking about these days. If that is inadequate, perhaps a comment or two at the bottom would be appropriate?