Swan falls in love with a tractor

German hotelier claims his eight-year-old bird, called Swanny, has been obsessed with the machine for years

• • Share
  • 
  • 

• Helen Pidd in Berlin
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 April 2011 17.03 BST
• Article history

A mute swan, the same breed as Schwani (or Swanny) who has fallen in love with a tractor Photograph: Alamy
They say that opposites attract. But can a bird ever find love with a piece of agricultural machinery? Ja, says a German hotelier, who claims that a swan is besotted with his tractor. The eight-year-old mute swan, rather uncreatively known as Schwani (Swanny), has allegedly become so obsessed with the 39hp vehicle that every time the engine starts up, he waddles over to say hello. This is no flash-in-the-pan fling, according to observers from the village of Velen in Münsterland in north-west Germany: Schwani has been devoted to the blue tractor for years. "Ever since we bought the tractor three years ago, Schwani has been following it everywhere it goes," Hermann-Josef Hericks told the tabloid Bild. But Veronika Schwill, who works at the hotel, said Schwani was not monogamous. "Schwani also finds diggers and machines on the building site next door interesting," she revealed. Why can't Schwani find love with another swan? wondered Bild. Animal behaviouralist Daniela Fiutak has a theory. "The swan presumably had contact with machines during puberty," she said. "He sees the tractor as a sexual partner." It would seem there is something in the water in Münsterland which sends swans into a flap. A few years ago a female called Petra hit the headlines after she fell in love with a pedalo shaped like a swan. Germany is garnering a reputation as a world centre for daft animal stories, many of them of dubious veracity. First there were the gay penguins of Bremerhaven zoo, near Bremen. Then came Knut (RIP), the abandoned polar bear who was strummed to sleep by his guitar-playing keeper in Berlin. Last year, Paul the Octopus from Oberhausen (also RIP) became a sensation when he allegedly picked out World Cup winners with his tentacles before each match. It was also reported over the weekend that a penguin named Bonaparte has fallen for a rubber boot at the Sea Life Konstanz in the south of Germany.