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Arranged marriages versus love partnerships: a study in bird parenting


Couples bonded in love partnerships prove to be more effective parents than couples in arranged marriages. That’s the results of a study on birds – zebra finches to be precise (New Scientist, September 14, 2015).

Birds that are allowed to choose their own partners become more diligent parents, according to a study in which arranged marriages were tested for zebra finches.

Why study zebra finches? Zebra finches are birds that mate for life and both birds look after their young – they share parental duties. Hence it was easier for the research team to study their parenting techniques.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (MPIO) in Seewiesen, Germany, were interested in how animals select their mates – presumably matching genes that were compatible with their own or choosing mates with ‘good’ behaviour.

The MPIO researchers deliberately arranged marriages for a group of zebra finches and let others have free choice in selecting their partners.

The research involved organising a ‘speed-dating’ event for 160 aviary zebra finches (80 males and 80 females), allowing them to choose their own mate. Then they paired half of the females with a male that they had not chosen – that is, they broke up the chosen partnership and arranged the ‘marriage’ for 40 females and 40 males.

The new couples (arranged and freely chosen) were put in individual cages for a few months to enable them to bond, after which time three pairs were transferred to aviaries for five months to allow them to breed.

The result was that there were 37% more surviving chicks (baby zebra finches) for the pairs who chose their own mate. For the arranged couples, three times more eggs were unfertilised, more eggs were buried or lost, and more chicks died after hatching than for freely chosen couples. Males in arranged marriages attended to the nest less diligently while the eggs were hatching than males in love partnerships.

The death rate for embryos was the same in both groups, suggesting that the lower egg survival rate was due to the quality of parenting, not genetic incompatibility in the arranged marriages. If the birds were choosing mates for genetic compatibility there would be more embryo deaths for the arranged couples’ eggs and more live hatchings for the love couples.

In addition, females were less willing to mate with males that they had not chosen and the males were more likely to leave their mate to look for a new partner.

Researchers suggest that reproductive success was lower for the arranged couples because ‘psychological constraints’ prevented them from parenting to the best of their ability. They think attractiveness is a relative, not absolute, concept in dating and mating, bonding and breeding.


Journal reference: PLOS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002248
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