Love at High Latitudes – Three Polar Love Stories to get you into the Valentine's Day Mood
What makes your heart beat faster on Valentine’s Day, and how do you surprise your sweetheart? While a box of chocolates, a romantic dinner, a poem or an expensive piece of jewelry may do the trick, there are lots of creative ways to say I love you. Find out how to celebrate love beyond Earth’s 66°33' latitudes and get some inspiration for the upcoming holiday.
Southern Elephant Seals: The Fat & Furious Takes it All
The love life of southern elephant seals isn’t for the faint-hearted! Mating success is all about size, strength and male dominance. Mating season lasts from around September to October and only the strongest alpha bulls win the right to mate, but get an entire harem to do so. The first step for a male elephant seal bull to succeed is to claim his territory. The colossal males shuffle onto the beautiful beaches around Antarctica and the subantarctic islands around a month before the females arrive. Once the much smaller females join, the males have already wobbled their gigantic bodies into place, posing and showing off their enormous blubbery torsos and trunk-like noses. Males can reach up to 5.8 meters (19 feet) in length and weigh up to 4,000 kilograms (8,800 lb.). The petite females are much smaller in comparison, reaching only up to 3 meters in length (9.8 feet) and up to 900 kilograms (1,980 lb.) in weight. Only the biggest males can hope for a harem, often consisting of up to 150 females. Forcing themselves onto their females, copulation commences as the male pins down the female with the sheer weight of his body. The act itself takes only a few minutes.
While competing with other bulls for their harem, bulls won’t leave their territories, not even for food. This period can take up to three months, during which their large blubber reserves function as their only sustenance. And elephant seal bull fights get intensely physical! Violent battles featuring body slamming, neck biting and deep roaring ensue against the backdrop of the most scenic beaches and landscapes in the world. Once the beta males retreat, often with substantial injuries, the only way for them to mate that season is to sneak up on a female of a big harem for a quickie in secret. After all, even the biggest alpha male cannot keep an eye on his many females at all times! Mating with a large harem and defending it against rivals is a full-time job, and sneaky beta males use any distraction to get a bit of the action for themselves.
Want to see these incredible giants and their peculiar mating behavior? Join our South Georgia cruises and spot them on the picturesque beaches of the subantarctic islands.
Penguins: Pebbles, Noise & Drama
Pebble-giving, trumpeting, head swinging and long-distance relationships are only part of the peculiarities of ecstatic penguin love. Each of the 18 worldwide penguin species has its own little quirks when it comes to winning over a mate. For gentoo and adelie penguins, it all starts with a pebble. For a male, finding the smoothest pebble is the key to his lover’s heart. If the female approves of the gift, she’ll place it in her nest. Both partners then keep building up a sturdy nest pebble by pebble, which is crucial for the survival of their future offspring. But not all penguins make the effort to search for stones, some take a short-cut by stealing pretty pebbles from other nests. This thievery is often countered by pecking and wing flaps by the nest owner. Neighboring nest owners may join in, deterring the impudent pebble thief from possible future advances on their own property.
Once coupled up, penguins will bow, preen, trumpet, sing and call to each other to get acquainted and to remember their unique calls, which are crucial for finding each other within the large crowds of a bustling colony. Penguin couples return each breeding season to the same nesting sites. Males arrive first from feeding at sea, locating and sprucing up last-year’s site, while waiting for their sweethearts. But the large, chaotic and bustling penguin colonies are also the perfect place for drama! While penguins are for the most part monogamous, they may hook up with other partners, in some cases, when their spoken-for partner returns late. Once the original female finally arrives and finds a new penguin female in the nest with her partner, a romcom-style drama unfolds, resulting in vicious conflict. Most of the time, the original female wins the fight.
While the warmer Antarctic summer months from October to February are the preferred mating season for most penguin species, emperor penguins fancy a winter romance! The largest of all penguin breeds starts courtship only around March and April. Just as many young single men across species, emperor penguins try to attract females by making a spectacle of themselves. Single males use head shaking, flipper raising, fancy walks and moves to impress available females. Once they catch one’s fancy, the female will join the male, mirroring and synchronizing the movements. Emperor penguins sign up for long-distance relationships. Once the female has laid the egg, she’s off on a long trek across the ice to the sea, where she feeds until it’s time to relieve her partner. Only very few emperor penguin couples mate for life and most of them commit to each other only for one breeding season.
See these cute drama queens in their natural habitat! Join our expedition cruises to Antarctica and enjoy guaranteed penguin encounters. Choose October to December to witness the mating season, or visit from December to February to see cute penguin chicks.
Polar Bears: The Lovely Stalking Stranger
Ladies, imagine you’ve decided to live off the grid in one of the most remote places in the world. You live in solitude high up north, roaming the beautiful Arctic landscapes and providing for yourself in peace and balance with nature. One day, while you’re walking through the snow, you suddenly feel like somebody is following you. You turn around, see nothing and so you wander on. But a while later, you are sure you hear steps in the crunchy snow behind you! Following you! As you turn around, you see a strange man following you, affixing all of your movements with his piercing eyes. Scary, right? Well, not if you’re a polar bear. For polar bears, this is about as romantic as it can be.
During the mating season from March through May, male polar bears seek out females in heat by following their scent trail. As polar bears are solitary fellows, they only come together for mating season. A female may attract multiple suitors, in which case the Don Juans will compete over who gets to mate. After a fierce fight, which can include violent paw swipes, bites to the neck, broken teeth and aggressive growling, the loser retreats, often seriously injured. The winner goes on to mate, copulating multiple times, with the act lasting 10-30 minutes. The polar bear love story is a short one. Couples only stay together for around a week, before the male moves on to stalk out another sweetheart, while the female returns to a life of solitude. Through delayed implantation of the fertilized egg, the female uses the polar summer to feed and gain enough fat reserves for the embryo to implant and develop. Polar bear pregnancies consume a lot of energy and if a female is underweight, her body reabsorbs the fertilized egg, thus not leading to a pregnancy.
Board our cruises to Svalbard from May to August, and with a little bit of luck, you may spot polar bears roaming the pack ice!
Did you know that you can experience the peculiar love life of polar wildlife on our expedition cruises to the Arctic and Antarctica? Check our new cruise season schedule and find the perfect adventure for you and your sweetheart.