RESEARCHERS at Oxford University's zoology department, who are currently in their own state of upheaval after being evicted from their buildings, have co-incidentally discovered that challenging times do not seem to make stronger bonds in groups.

Hundreds of staff and scientists were told to get out of the university's zoology department buildings on South Parks Roads this month after asbestos was discovered there.

They are now expecting the buildings to be closed for about two years, and it could even be demolished: in the meantime, biologists have had to squeeze in with historians, geographers and physicists in other university buildings around the city.

In the midst of the upheaval, the zoology department today sent out a press release saying researchers have discovered that, contrary to the previous assumptions, extreme and challenging situations do not necessarily strengthen bonds in large groups of animals.

Previous research showed that animals that go in for cooperative breeding, when adults in a group team up to care for offspring, are more likely to live in harsher climates, such as deserts.

Without any evidence for why this happens, scientists concluded that larger family structures were formed as a survival strategy.

But a team from Oxford's zoology department who studied 4,707 species of birds living communally have now concluded that such group structures are just the result of existing monogamous relationships reinforcing stronger genetic bonds in family groups, not groups being forced to work as teams because of challenging environments.

The group found that siblings with full biological ties are just more likely than others to stay with their family and help day to day.

The study also concluded that parental relationships - specifically whether they were polyandrous or monogamous - plays a key role in whether animal families stay together as a group or not.

Let's hope the zoology department team had some strong existing bonds to help them through their next two years out in the cold.