typically stay with one partner for life, sharing the labor of hunting and raising young .

Many romantic storylines focus on the lengths to which one character will go to win the affection of another. Animals do this through incredible displays of beauty, art, and skill.

Recent romantic storytelling has subverted the animal-as-catalyst trope. In Marley & Me (2008), the dog Marley is the constant third party whose chaos both strains and ultimately deepens the human marriage—here, the animal relationship is the conflict that proves resilience. In Best in Show (2000), the mockumentary reveals that couples’ relationships with their show dogs are displaced expressions of their romantic dysfunction. And in the horror-romance hybrid The Lure (2015), the animal (mermaid) nature of one lover becomes the impossible barrier, asking whether love can survive fundamental otherness.

Males "propose" by searching for the perfect pebble to present to a female for her nest. Bowerbirds