GAY PENGUIN KIDNAPPERS!
Plus penguin shortage leads to plastic replacements at Telford Exotic Zoo
Two male king penguins at Odense Zoo in Denmark “kidnapped” the chick of a rival pair they thought was being neglected. Penguins are known to form homosexual relationships just like humans. The incident led to a raucous battle between the grownup birds. Zookeeper Sandie Hedegard Munck blamed the chick’s biological father. “I went to the enclosure and could see something was wrong,” she said. “The parents were gone and their offspring had been kidnapped. The female is very caring for the kid. I think she had been out to get her bath, and it had been the male’s turn to care for the kid. He may have then left and the [gay] couple thought, ‘It’s a pity, we’ll take it’”. Footage showed the mother later squawking in distress as she tries to reclaim her baby, while the gay couple huddle round it. The dispute was settled after the zoo returned the chick to its parents. However, the episode had a happy ending for the aspiring fathers: the zoo gave them an egg from a new mother who was too ill to look after her offspring.
Another male penguin couple, Magic and Sphen, are incubating a foster egg in their impressive nest Down Under. The duo developed a strong bond and became inseparable before breeding season at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium in Australia, waddling around and going for swims together. As spring approached, the gentoo penguins started collecting ice pebbles to create a nest and gathered more pebbles than any other couple. After they showed parenting prowess with a dummy egg, keepers gave them an egg from a heterosexual penguin couple that had two. At the time of the news report, they were swapping duties daily, one doing his best to incubate the egg while the other patrolled the nest’s perimeter, warding off potential pebble thieves or overinquisitive neighbours. While Sphenare is older and excellent at incubating, Magic is younger and still learning. D.Mail, 28 Sept; (Sydney) D.Telegraph, 29 Sept, 13 Oct 2018.
• Gay penguin couples have successfully reared chicks in zoos before. In 2009, for instance, a couple called Z and Vielpunkt in Bremerhaven Zoo, Germany, reared a chick rejected by its biological parents. Then, four years ago at Wingham Wildlife Park in Kent, another gay penguin couple reared an abandoned chick. Staff stepped in after the baby bird’s mother had to leave the egg because the father refused to help her incubate it. The two male Humboldt penguins, Jumbs and Kermit, were given the egg, which hatched on 12 April 2014. Park owner Tony Binskin said: “These two have so far proven to be two of the best penguin parents we have had.” There have also been stories of homosexual vultures and bisexual polyamorous geese with similar outcomes. BBC News, 3 June 2009, 14 May 2014.
• Guishan Zoo in Guangxi province, southern China, which opened on 25 November 2017, was forced to shut down after exhibiting fake penguins as the real thing. Pictures of the zoo posted by People’s Daily Online showed more than 10 inflatable penguins, along with real but unimpressive “rare wildlife” such as chickens and geese. Tourists had to pay 15 yuan (£1.68) per person to visit the zoo, which claimed to feature “penguins from the South Pole” and a fortune tortoise. There was a crocodile pond with a warning sign saying the crocodile could hurt people – but a live tortoise could be seen living in the pond, along with a pop-up penguin. The unnamed zoo owner claimed the poultry were not part of the attraction, but were there to be fed to the crocodile. Punters raged that they were being treated as “idiots” and demanded a refund. dailymail.co.uk, 4 Dec 2017.
• Telford Exotic Zoo in Shropshire, which first opened in July 2017, spent months building a penguin enclosure and was expecting a delivery of six Humboldt penguins in time for the summer holidays, but that was before an outbreak of avian malaria swept through the UK. Owner Scott Adams said zoos depend on penguins bred in the UK and Europe to protect those in the wild and to monitor the gene pool. “Lots of zoos, if not most zoos, have lost a lot of penguins and in some case most of their stock,” he said. “Penguins only mate once a year, so we’ve got to sit back and let nature take its course until the numbers build up in the UK and Europe.” The enclosure at the zoo is too specialised to be adapted for other animals, so the zoo will make do with plastic models of various penguin species until it can get real live birds, probably next year.
Avian malaria is endemic in wild domestic birds and is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. It can be fatal to species that haven’t evolved resistance to the disease, such as penguins. Penguins have never had to build immunity to it, as they live on or near the sea where the Anopheles mosquito does not occur. BBC News, 1 Oct; telegraph.co.uk, businessinsider. com, 3 Oct 2018.