German zoo’s gay penguin pair now parents
A pair of gay penguins at a German zoo have fathered a chick after successfully adopting an abandoned egg.
Zookeepers at Bremerhaven Zoo gave the egg to the male pair – called Z and Vielpunkt – to care for after another couple threw it out of their nest.
The egg finally hatched on April 25 after Z and Vielpunkt had been looking after it for 35 days. Since then the penguins have been caring for the chick, feeding it and fussing over it constantly.
“Since the chick arrived they are behaving in the same way as one would expect a heterosexual couple to do. Both happy fathers are now diligently handling the everyday care … of their adopted offspring,” the zoo said in a statement.
The Humboldt penguins are part of a six-strong gay community at the zoo. In the past the male penguins have attempted to mate and adopted stones as surrogate eggs.
Four Swedish female penguins had previously been brought into the enclosure in an unsuccessful effort to encourage them to mate, prompting protests from gay rights activists.
The zoo says there is nothing unusual about animal homosexuality. “Sex and coupling up in our world do not necessarily have anything to do with reproduction,” it said in a statement.
The pair are not the first gay penguin dads; males birds at New York’s Central Park Zoo and a Chinese zoo have also successfully incubated eggs.
