polygyny

Adult relationships vary in form across societies and include not only the type most common around the world today — heterosexual monogamy — but also same-sex marriage, nonmarital unions, polyamory, polygyny and polyandry.

While the tomb reveals evidence of polygyny - men having children with multiple women - it also shows that polyandry was also widespread: women having children with multiple men.

But to the monarchy’s critics — including thousands who have risked arrest and braved police water cannons and tear gas to join Thailand’s greatest pro-democracy protests in years — Sineenat represents something more troubling: the return of polygyny to a royal court they view as regressive and feudal, and a reminder of the unpredictable behavior of the 68-year-old, thrice-divorced King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Polygyny has been recorded in related species, such as barn owls and Eurasian eagle owls, but is still very rare among raptors.

This highly unusual behavior is the first record of polygyny—a male mating with two or more females—in great horned owls, says Christian Artuso, an ornithologist with Bird Studies Canada.