Gay Penguins Raise Chick

By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 3, 2009 7:01 PM CDT
Gay Penguins Raise Chick
In this file photo, King Penguins march around the St. Louis Zoo.   (AP Photo/The Post-Dispatch, John L. White)

A pair of homosexual male penguins is raising a chick together, the BBC reports. A zoo in Germany reports that one of its three pairs of gay males hatched the egg after it was rejected by its biological parents. "Since the chick arrived, they have been behaving just as you would expect a heterosexual couple to do," said a zoo official. "The two happy fathers spend their days attentively protecting, caring for, and feeding their adopted offspring."

The zoo in Bremerhaven made headlines a few years ago when it noticed homosexual traits among six male Humboldt penguins—attempts at mating and hatching chicks from stones—and brought in female penguins to see if they'd change. Didn't work. For the record, the new dads are named Z and Vielpunkt. (More penguins stories.)

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