Gay Penguins In China Making Excellent Parents!

Back in the fall, two male "gay" penguins in China started stealing eggs in an effort to become gay daddies! They started placing stones at the feet of other penquin parents before waddling away with their eggs, in a bid to hide their theft!

But the deception was noticed by other penguins at the zoo, who ostracised the gay couple from their group. So zoo keepers decided to segregate the pair of three-year-old male birds to avoid disrupting the rest of the community during the hatching season.

A keeper at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China explained that the gay couple had the natural urge to become fathers, despite their sexuality.

"One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite this being a biological impossibility for this couple, the natural desire is still there," a keeper told the Austrian Times newspaper.

"It's not discrimination. We have to fence them separately, otherwise the whole group will be disturbed during hatching time," he added.

So zookeepers gave the pair two eggs laid by an inexperienced first-time mother last month.

'We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they've turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,' said one of the keepers.

'It's very encouraging and if this works out well we will try to arrange for them to become real parents themselves with artificial insemination.'

There are numerous examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but gay penguins have captured the public's attention more than any other species.

A German zoo provoked outrage from gay lobby groups after attempting to mate a group of gay male penguins with Swedish female birds who were flown in especially to seduce them. But the project was abandoned after the males refused to be "turned", showing no interest in their would-be mates.

In 2002 a couple of penguins at a New York zoo who had been together for eight years were "outed" when keepers noticed that they were both males and had seemed to pair up! Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, were completely devoted to each other.

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, and a chick, Tango, was born. And so was the book! And Tango Makes Three .

What's strange is when offered female companionship, they adamantly refused it. And the females were not interested in them, either. Then after Tango was hatched, homewrecker Scrappy, a single female newly arrived from SeaWorld in San Diego, caught Silo's eye.

"Silo and Roy stopped spending as much time together or building a nest," said the curator of animals at the zoo.

Silo promptly moved in with Scrappy, building a new nest with her. Zookeepers were at a loss to explain Silo's sudden conversion.

So I guess Silo was really bi?!