Happy ending for egg-stealing penguins
December 16th, 2008 by Rosie
Two gay male penguins who were punished for stealing eggs have turned out to be the best parents in the zoo, according to keepers.
Earlier this month we reported the story of the gay penguin couple in a Chinese zoo who were stealing eggs in order to become fathers.
The birds were segregated from the other penguins because they were sneakily placing rocks by straight couples, and then waddling away with the real eggs.
However, following pressure from visitors to the zoo, keepers gave them two eggs of their own, and were astonished at their parenting skills.
‘We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they’ve turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,’ said one of the zookeepers to the Daily Mail.
“It’s very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.”
[via Mombian]
This is so sweet but penguins probably do this in the wild loads! Male and female penguins look exactly the same and they don’t have any ‘traditional’ roles - they both look for food, they both rear the young, both feed them (by vomitting in their mouths!) etc by taking it in turns.
Rasul ∼ December 16th, 2008 4:45 pmHumans are definitely playing catch up with penguins!
Rocks and stones are really important and precious to penguins for building nests so it was maybe in payment for the eggs?! I’m gonna stop being a geek now, thanks for the story, totally interesting :) xxx