Penguins in love

Your morning adorable: Penguins in love
10:37 AM, April 18, 2009

Penguins

Squawk and Milou, two male penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo, began to exhibit courtship behavior in 2004 -- but they were hardly the first same-sex penguin couple the zoo had seen.

Another pair, male chinstrap penguins named Roy and Silo, refused the companionship of female penguins but seemed determined to become penguin parents anyway. The New York Times reported:

At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own. Mr. Gramzay is full of praise for them.

''They did a great job,'' he said. He was standing inside the glassed-in penguin exhibit, where Roy and Silo had just finished lunch. Penguins usually like a swim after they eat, and Silo was in the water. Roy had finished his dip and was up on the beach.

The Central Park Zoo has also seen Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who also tried to incubate eggs together.

And a Chinese zoo came under fire late last year for removing a same-sex penguin couple from the rest of the colony after they repeatedly tried to replace male-and-female penguin couples' eggs with rocks, taking the eggs to incubate themselves. When visitors complained, zookeepers gave the couple two eggs that had been laid by another penguin. Result? One keeper reported that the two 3-year-old males "have turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo," according to the Daily Mail.

--Lindsay Barnett

Photo courtesy of Nicole Bengiveno / New York Times
Story courtesy of LA Times@
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/04/penguins.html

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Aquarium penguin pair have gay old time

2009/04/18
Barbara Hollands EAST LONDON CORRESPONDENT hollandsb@avusa.co.za

LOVEBIRDS: Gay penguin couple Molly and Guido are both boys but that has not stopped them from setting up a nest together.

WHEN they find that special bird that ticks all the right boxes, penguins mate for life and that is exactly what Eastern Cape duo Molly and Guido have done.

The only difference between them and the other devoted African penguin pairs at the East London Aquarium is that they are both male, Molly having been named when it was originally assumed, incorrectly, that he was female.

But being of the same sex has not stopped Molly and Guido from setting up nest together and even attempting to incubate an egg – albeit an adopted one.

Enthralled staff said this was the first time a same-sex couple has ever paired up at the Esplanade aquarium and that the duo had become something of a tourist attraction ever since word got out that they are gay.

“Molly and Guido paired up in February 2008 and we only realised they were both male when we had all the penguins sexed later in the year,” said aquarium curator Siani Tinley.

“We found it fascinating and started watching them more closely and realised that although they had built a nest together and took turns looking after it like other pairs do, no eggs had been laid.”

Molly arrived at the aquarium after being washed up on Cove Rock Beach in 2006, while Guido was born at the aquarium five years ago, but once they hooked up, the two became inseparable.

To make their union complete, aquarium staff placed a fake egg in their nest earlier this year, which the loved-up birds incubated for two weeks.

“We gave them the fake egg just to see their response and then, when another breeding pair kicked out one of their eggs, we put it under Molly and Guido – it was an opportunity for us to see how nature adapts,” said Tinley

Unfortunately the egg was found outside the pair‘s nest a couple of weeks later.

When Weekend Post visited the aquarium, the two lovebirds were mingling with the rest of the colony, but soon waddled off to their cosy nest where they happily huddled side-by-side.

Story courtesy of The Weekend Post@
http://www.weekendpost.co.za/article.aspx?id=412628