Male gentoo penguins Sphen and Magic first caught the eye of zookeepers and later the world in 2018 after they constructed a nest of pebbles collectively. The pair was finally given reside eggs from different penguin {couples} to incubate, ensuing within the hatching of their first chick, Sphengic, in 2018, adopted by Clancy two years later.
Sealife Aquarium revealed that Sphen, the older companion within the “same-sex” penguin “energy couple,” handed away simply shy of his twelfth birthday, which is taken into account an extended life for penguins in captivity.
Sphen and Magic rapidly grew to become homosexual icons in Australia and past, inspiring a float at Sydney’s Homosexual and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade and even being featured within the Netflix sitcom Atypical. Nevertheless, the pair additionally confronted criticism, with some conservative voices accusing these celebrating the penguins of pushing a political agenda.
Not like many mammal species, each female and male penguins equally share parental duties. Similar-sex penguin {couples}, involving each women and men, usually are not unusual, though they are typically short-lived within the wild.
The phenomenon of same-sex penguin {couples} adopting eggs in captivity just isn’t distinctive to Sphen and Magic. A number of zoos worldwide have reported comparable instances. In 2009, two male penguins, Z and Vielpunkt, efficiently hatched and reared a chick rejected by its heterosexual mother and father at a zoo in Berlin. Earlier than them, Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at a zoo in New York, have been noticed continuously trying to mate with one another.
