LONDON Zoo is celebrating Gay Pride and it’s famous same-sex penguin couple with a penguin-size banner entitled ‘Some penguins are gay. Get over it’. Gay residents, Humboldt penguins Ronnie and Reggie, welcomed the sign erected on the pebbles of their beach enclosure ahead of the annual Gay Pride Parade and celebrations next weekend. SMITTEN DUO The […]
LONDON Zoo is celebrating Gay Pride and it’s famous same-sex penguin couple with a penguin-size banner entitled ‘Some penguins are gay. Get over it’.
Gay residents, Humboldt penguins Ronnie and Reggie, welcomed the sign erected on the pebbles of their beach enclosure ahead of the annual Gay Pride Parade and celebrations next weekend.
The same-sex pair became an item in 2014 and famously adopted an egg that was abandoned by another couple a year later.
In a press release, London Zoo explained: “The pair shared parenting duties of their chick, Kyton, until he fledged the nest.
“They remain as strong as ever and are often found snuggled up in their nest box together.”
The smitten duo share their home with 91 other penguins, including fellow same sex couples Nadja and Zimmer and Dev and Martin.
One-year-old baby penguin Rainbow who hatched during Pride celebrations last year, also lives in the enclosure and will celebrate her first birthday this weekend.
The enclosure’s makeover is designed to pay homage to Stonewall’s ‘Get Over It’ campaign.
The zoo also plans on hosting a number of Pride-themed events during Zoo Nights next weekend.
Event information reads: “Visitors will be able to learn about gender and mating in the animal kingdom at a Pride-themed talk, where they’ll discover just how common same-sex pairings are – from penguins and pandas to goats and giraffes.
“Visitors can check out the Zoo’s pride of lions, enjoy delicious street food from around the world, and score a hole-in-one at the Zoo’s new mini-golf course.”
The Zoo’s LGBT+ society, Team Pride, has also announced they will be proudly marching in the London Pride Parade on Saturday 6 July.
The parade will travel from Portland Place station to Trafalgar Square, where there’ll be plenty of music, dancing and theatrical performances.
This year marks 50 years since the Stonewall riots in Manhattan, in New York.
On June 28 1969, a series of demonstrations by members of the LGBT+ community protested against a police raid that began at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood.
Penguin Beach is the UK’s largest penguin pool, with 1,200 square metres holding 450,000 litres of water.
The enclosure comes with a special penguin nursery, a chick incubation unit, and a smaller pool where baby penguins learn to swim.
Same-sex behaviour has been observed in over 450 species of animal, and are fairly common in penguins.
Scientists have observed homosexual behaviour in animals to varying degrees including sex, courtship, affection, parenting and pair bonding.
Biologist Bruce Bagemihl said the animal kingdom engages in homosexual behaviour “with much greater sexual diversity than the scientific community and society at large have previously been willing to accept.”
Two gay penguins Eduardo and Rio have been fostering penguin chicks at San Francisco zoo.
And last year, a gay penguin couple “kidnapped” a baby last while its parents waddled off for a swim, a zookeeper claimed.
The drama unfolded in a zoo in Denmark when the chick’s mum and dad were having their daily paddle.
Animal keeper Sandie Hedegård Munck told Danish broadcaster DR the male penguin couple at Odense Zoo had been desperate to become parents.
So, she claims when they saw the chick being “neglected” by its parents, they decided to intervene and snatch it in hope of adopting it.
Around the same time, a gay penguin couple in Sydney’s Sea Life Aquarium started a family after it was decided to let them have an egg to nurture.
Penguins Sphen and Magic began forging an intense relationship with each other just before breeding season got underway.
The Gento penguins could be seen waddling in tandem and swimming alongside and were so close it was decided to let them adopt.
In May, it was revealed that more than half of the penguins at an aquarium in Ireland were in same-sex relationships.
JUST like some humans, penguins form same sex relationships.
The first mention of this was in 1911 when explorer George Murray Levick spotted male birds coupling up at Cape Adare.
Seemingly scandalised by the sight, the Edwardian scientist described the behaviour as “depraved”.
More recently the behaviour has been observed in a number of zoos.
In 2014 Jumbs and Hurricane, two Humboldt penguins at Wingham Wildlife Park in Kent became inseparable and became celebrities in their own right.
They later successfully hatched and reared an egg given to them as surrogate parents after the mum abandoned it halfway through incubation.
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