Gay penguins steal egg in bid to become dads

A same-sex penguin couple have stolen an egg in an apparent attempt to become parents.

A pair of male African penguins were discovered nesting an egg alongside heterosexual couples at the DierenPark zoo in Amersfoort in the Netherlands, out.com has reported.

“The gay couple are looking after the egg very well and take turns in keeping it warm,” zookeeper Marc Belt told dutchnews.nl.

The zoo says the gay couple stole the egg from a heterosexual couple during an “unguarded moment”. The heterosexual penguins went on to produce another egg.

Same-ex coupling appears to be fairly common among penguins, and in the animal kingdom in general. There have been several instances of same-sex pairs adopting eggs at zoos, but they are typically provided by zookeepers rather than stolen by the penguins.

In August, two male king penguins at Berlin Zoo reportedly adopted an egg after attempting to nest with several different objects including “a wet rock and a slimy fish”. After those items predictably failed to hatch, zookeepers provided the pair with a donor egg from a 22-year-old female penguin, but after a period of incubation it turned out that the egg had not been fertile.

“It is very common that two penguins of the same sex come together,” zoo spokesperson Maximilian Jäger told The New York Times. “We are sure they would be good parents because they were so nice to their stone.”

At a zoo in New Zealand, a lesbian penguin couple called Thelma and Louise were given an egg after previously fostering a chick that the bird’s birth mother had struggled to take care of.

“They absolutely love having a chick to take care of,” said zookeeper Ebony Dwipayana, according to PinkNews. “Obviously they’re not able to have their own, so the fact that they can still raise a healthy chick is amazing for them, and is such a beautiful experience to share.”

Although homosexual penguins have been known to zoologists for a long time, they have only garnered wider attention in recent years. In the past, there appear to have been at least some efforts to conceal the behaviour.

During the failed Scott Antarctic expedition of 1910 to 1913, British scientist George Murray Levick was surprised to witness what he described as “constant acts of depravity” by penguins. Levick was apparently so shocked to discover gay penguins that he attempted to contain the spread of the information by writing his report in Greek. When his paper was published, the homosexual behaviour was intentionally left out. – Newsweek

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