A pair of gay penguins, seemingly eager to be parents, have gone the route of stealing eggs from another couple yet again.
Two male African penguins at Dutch zoo DierenPark Amsersfoort took the next of a lesbian penguin pair, the zoo revealed on Oct. 12.
This comes after the two took the egg of a heterosexual penguin couple last year. Back then, the stolen egg failed to hatch and it appears that the gay couple still wants a chick of their own.
The two take turns to sit on the eggs, but it is not likely they will hatch because they might not have been fertilized, zookeeper Sander Drost told Dutch News on Oct. 20. The female penguins are expected to build another nest given that penguins breed twice a year.
Drost said the two male penguins dominate the penguin enclosure comprised of 17 penguins.
Back in 2018, a gay penguin couple in Denmark’s Odense Zoo “kidnapped” a chick from a straight couple. The animal keeper reasoned then that the couple may have thought the chick was abandoned because its parents left it alone. The gay couple ended up adopting an egg from another female penguin.
Most penguin species are monogamous for life, Marlene Zuk, a professor at the University of Minnesota told NBC News on Oct. 24. She noted that “being a part of a pair and raising a chick is just deeply ingrained in being a penguin.” JB
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