Meet Penelope and Missy, Ireland’s Same-Sex Penguin Couple

by David Badash on April 2, 2014

Gay penguin couples aren’t especially rare, but usually males, not females, are found in same-sex couples. Ireland’s Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium now boasts its first lesbian penguin couple, Penelope (image, left) and Missy (right).

The Irish Examiner reports that Kate Hall, the aquarium’s head penguin keeper, “said Missy and Penelope have been displaying all the signs of a courting couple in their enclosure, which is home to a dozen of the black and white creatures.”

“The thing penguins do to show they like each other is they bow to each other and they are doing that. When they come into breeding season, they do it to the penguin of their choice and it reinforces the bond between them. It is very sweet to watch.”
“The ones in Central Park are icons for the gay community over there,” said Ms Hall. “They have a lot of fondness and affection for them.
They are following in the footsteps of a number of famous same-sex penguin couples including long-time pair, Roy and Silo, from the Central Park Zoo in New York City, along with a King penguin couple in a Danish zoo which became adoptive fathers to a chick from an abandoned egg.

In 2011, to much international outrage, two gay male African penguins, Pedro and Buddy, were separated and at that point, mated with female penguins in a Toronto zoo. The couple were reunited the following year.

And in 2009, there was great controversy surrounding a children’s book, And Tango Makes Three: “Slippery Slope” Leads To Win For Homosexual Penguin Agenda.

Here’s a 2012 video of the penguins in the Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium being fed (Please ignore the cheesy music):

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