Two male penguins are set to fulfil their goal of becoming parents after they were given an abandoned egg to care for.
The couple, Skipper and Ping, who live at Berlin Zoo, have long wanted to have a penguin chick of their own, and have even tried hatching “fish and stones” in the past, according to zoo spokesperson Maximilian Jäger, who spoke to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
The king penguins, both of who are 10-years-old, were given the egg in July after it was abandoned by the only female king penguin at the zoo, who has recently shown disinterest in her eggs.
According to zookeeper Norbert Zahmel, the expectant fathers’ instincts kicked in as soon as they were given the egg.
“We just had to put it in front of one of the males,” Zahmel told BZ newspaper. “He immediately knew what to do.”
Since receiving the egg, Skipper and Ping have reportedly been “behaving like model parents, taking turns to keep the egg warm”, according to Jäger.
This is the first time the zoo has tried to have a same-sex penguin couple incubate an egg, which, if successful, would mean the first chick born at the zoo since 2002.
If the egg proves to be fertilised, Skipper and Ping, who moved to the zoo in April from Hamburg's Tierpark Hagenbeck, should expect their chick to hatch in early September.
Gay penguins are found in both the wild and in captivity. At the Central Park Zoo in New York City, same-sex penguin couple Silo and Roy, who raised a penguin baby together, were the inspiration for the children’s book And Tango Makes Three.
And at Ireland’s Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium, the majority of the penguins are gay, with eight of the 14 gentoo penguins coupled with a partner of the same sex.
