There’s another penguin rainbow family in the world!
A gay penguin couple stole a baby from ‘bad parents’ at a Denmark zoo.
Elias and Emil, as we’re calling them, are the stars of a dramatic video filmed yesterday at Odense Zoo.
The same-sex penguin couple felt like a baby was being ignored by its straight penguin parents.
Gay penguin ‘steal’ baby from straight parents at Denmark zoo
Elias and Emil decided to ‘steal’ the newborn chick, and protect it from its negligent mother and father.
‘I could see there was something wrong,’ Sandie Hedegård Munck, animal keeper in Odense Zoo, said.
‘The parent couple was gone and the kid had been kidnapped. There were a couple of homosexual males who had snatched the kid and stood with it.’
Munck believed the female had gone to bathe, and it was the male’s turn to look after the hatchling.
‘He may have not gone to care for the baby, and the couple thought, “well, we’ll take it”,’ Munck added.
‘I expected the parents to come and demand the kid back.
‘But the male wandered around acting like he’d never had a kid. The female was searching for the baby, but not very hard.’
Penguin chick returned to its parents
This behavior was surprising for the zookeepers.
‘The female is very caring for the kid, and she is also very aggressive to us if we get too close. I could not imagine she would leave it. The male is a bit more relaxed about his parenting.’
Odenze Zoo workers observed the female finally finding the chick and beginning to act aggressive to Elias and Emil.
While the gay couple were protective, zookeepers intervened and gave the chick back to the mother.
Gay couple given egg of their own to raise
The story does have a happy ending.
Zookeepers observed Elias and Emil were ready to be parents. They decided to give them an egg from a mother that was unable to raise it on her own.
Back in 1998, penguin couple Roy and Silo were a same-sex pair in New York City’s Central Park Zoo.
They were spotted by staff in 1998 trying to mate and hatching a rock as if it was an egg.
Zoo keepers gave them an egg from another pair of penguins, which resulted in the couple raising a female chick named Tango.
Tango then formed a same-sex relationship with another female penguin. Their story became ‘And Tango Makes Three…’ a popular children’s book.
Related:
Gay vulture dads adopt egg and are now raising a chick together in Amsterdam zoo
