Are penguins gay or bisexual

What’s With All the Same-sex attracted Penguins?

Over and over again, zoos and aquariums around the world are making headlines for their homosexual penguin couplings. One of the most iconic couples was Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins who began performing mating rituals at the Main Park Zoo in 1998. After successfully incubating a rock and then a dummy egg, zookeepers decided to give the loving couple a real, fertilized egg. Roy and Silo hatched a baby, a female penguin named Tango. Tango then grew up to form a partnership with another female penguin named Tanuzi.

The list of gay penguin couples goes on and on and spans a wide range of species. Harry and Pepper were a pair of Magellenic penguins at the San Francisco Zoo. Sphen and Magic are a pair of male Gentoo penguins at SEA LIFE Aquarium in Sydney who hatched their first chick in 2018. Electra and Viola, also Gentoo penguins, are raising a chick at the L’Oceanogràfic in Valencia, Spain. At Zoo Berlin, two King penguins named Skipper and Ping have been trying to become fathers, unfortunately with no luck. Ronnie and Reggie are a pair of Humboldt penguins in London. In the Netherlands, a gay African penguin couple rec

Two male King Penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) at the Berlin Zoo have adopted an egg rejected by a female penguin, and the world has gone mad. Why? Well, for one reason, it’s because Skip and Ping are perceived as “gay penguins”, since they’re a same-sex couple. Here’s the New York Times article about it:

The story of Skip and Ping from the NYT:

The zoo knew they were a couple when they arrived from Hamburg this year, and it became clear within weeks that they wanted to open a family, he said.

“It is very common that two penguins of the same sex come together. I don’t think it is the majority of penguins, but it is not rare either,” Mr. Jäger said on Tuesday. “We are sure they would be good parents because they were so nice to their stone.” [Before they got an egg they brooded a stone.]

So the zookeepers decided to give Skip — short for Skipper — and Ping a shot at fatherhood after a 22-year-old female, called The Orange because of the color of her wings, laid an egg in July. She had never hatched a chick of her own.

“We just had to put the egg in front of one of them, and he knew just what to do,” Mr. Jäger said. “He took his beak

Everyone loves penguins, but not everyone loves gay penguins.

Since at least 1911, scientists have observed penguins “engaging in lesbian behaviour.” One of the interesting things about this piece of history is that researchers considered the earliest reports so shocking, the behaviour so depraved, that they didn’t want them to become public. So they wrote private copies of the report with Greek letters to retain them secret.

But the news got out anyway.

In the late 1990’s, in a New York zoo, two male chinstrap penguins raised a chick. Roy and Silo became penguin superstars and their story was told in a play and at least two children’s books.

To this day, this petty penguin family is being used as an argument by both North American liberals and the Christian right. Who knew that penguins could be so controversial? We treasure them!


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are penguins gay or bisexual

Scientists explore the evolution of animal homosexuality

Imperial researchers are using a new approach to understand why gay behaviour is so shared across the animal kingdom.

Read this article in our new Imperial Stories immersive digital storytelling platform!

In 1910, a team of scientists set off on the Terra Nova Expedition to explore Antarctica. Among them was George Murray Levick, a zoologist and photographer who would be the first researcher to learn the world's largest Adélie penguin colony. He chronicled the animals' daily activities in great detail.

In his notebooks, he described their sexual behaviour, including sex between male birds. However, none of these notes would appear in Levick's published papers. Concerned by the graphic content, he only printed 100 copies of Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin to circulate privately. The last remaining copy was recently unearthed providing valuable insights into animal homosexuality research.

But forays into animal homosexuality research long predate Levick, with observations published as far back as the 1700s and 1800s. More than 200 years later, research has moved past some of the taboos those e

Once upon a day, on a sunny day at the Central Park Zoo, two penguins named Roy and Silo formed a very special bond. Shortly after meeting, zoo personnel observed the two penguins engaging in mating rituals. Despite the reality that both penguins were male, this was the first stage of a 6-year romance. The bond was so robust, that they even tried to hatch a rock as if it were an egg. Eventually, zookeepers gave them a fertilized egg that eventually hatched, resulting in the couple raising a baby penguin named Tango together.

Source: Pixabay/Pexels

The story, and many others like it, have become quite popular in the media—so popular that this particular passion inspired a children’s book called And Tango Makes Three. Not surprisingly, the story and the book that came with it stirred up a lot of negative attention as well, and currently And Tango Makes Three is banned in some areas of Florida. But why all the fuss over such a nice love story? Why does the thought of two gay penguins engaging in romantic behavior form people so upset?

For decades, groups of people have castigated same-sex sexual deed as unnatural. The logic is that sexual encounters between same-sex i