Imagine waking up as a penguin with two dads.
Then, as your life goes on, two women penguins knock at your dwelling and claim to be your real parents. That possibility isn’t as remote as you think when it comes to our favorite arctic birds.
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While this plot sounds a lot like a soap opera, the truth can be stranger than fiction. In a zoo in the Netherlands, two gay penguins and a baby are at the center of the scandal.
The staff members of DierenPark Amersfoort were in a buzz after discovering something.
Apparently, a couple of African male penguins are not where they’re supposed to be. They have taken over a nest of eggs as their own.
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Zookeeper Sander Drost described the couple as “very determined” when they resorted to desperate measures just to have a child.
The penguins were even seen taking turns to look after and incubate the nest. They were also considered a “dominant couple” in a pod of 17 penguins residing in the zoo.
This isn’t the first time the couple stole eggs.
The couple became viral before when they performed an “egg-napping” on an unsuspecting heterosexual penguin couple.
Unfortunately, the egg didn’t hatch because it was unfertilized. And even if it seems that their heist is successful yet again, their luck wouldn’t hold out for long. Since the next was taken from a lesbian penguin couple, the eggs were most likely unfertilized as well.
The staff says they’re keeping an eye on the couple.
The heterosexual penguin couple laid a new egg after the theft. Maybe in some other time, the gay penguins will raise a chick of their own too.
“Maybe one day we will welcome a chick that has been hatched by a gay couple. Who knows, they might succeed next year,” Drost said in a statement published on the zoo’s website. In the same statement, they also mentioned that penguins lay eggs twice a year.
Same-sex parental penguins aren’t new.
Around the world, homosexual penguins have been adopting eggs to raise as their own. In Spain’s Oceanogràfic València aquarium, Electra and Violet, a female pair of Gentoo penguins, successfully hatched an egg.
On the other side of the globe, in the “land down under”, Gentoo penguins Sphen and Magic raised a female chick in the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.
They also said that it “takes two to tango”, but in Central Park Zoo in New York, a trio formed the tango. Silo and Roy welcomed Tango, which also became the subject of a children’s book.
Penguins are usually found in the Southern Hemisphere.
Penguins are also believed to be monogamous by nature. They find a partner and keep them for life, a trait displayed by a handful of species.
Major threats to their population include climate change. The quick melting of ice caps affects their breeding and feeding grounds.
As their species continue to endure the threats to their habitat, we hope that these couples will be given the chance to realize their parental dreams.
Watch how a gay penguin couple takes over the nest of a lesbian penguin couple.
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