Couple of gay penguins kidnaps chick, gets the egg of their own to raise

A couple of gay penguins at the Odense Zoo in Denmark removed a chick from another couple, probably after seeing the couple neglect their baby.

Sandie Hedegård Munck, a zookeeper, told the Danish broadcaster DR that the penguin had gone for a bath and that the penguin was supposed to watch the chick. But the penguin seems to have left the chick alone.

"In nature, the natural behavior is that, until a certain age, one of the parents will always be with the chick," said Dyan deNapoli, penguin expert, TED speaker and author. Newsweek. For example, as one parent does not take fish, the other protects the egg.

After the gay couple kidnapped the chick, the father went around as if he had never had a baby and the mother looked for the chick.

This is not the first time that a penguin chick abduction has taken place. "It happens in nature, in zoos and aquariums. It's unusual, but it happens from time to time, "said deNapoli. In emperor penguins, for example, a female penguin can kidnap a chick from another penguin for a short time if her own child is missing or dead. Seeing homosexual couples in nature is not unheard of. But men and women are alike so it can be hard to tell the difference between them.

In 1911, Dr. George Murray Levick established the first known record of homosexual penguin pairs in the wild, detailed in a 2012 Cambridge University Press publication. These penguins were Adélie penguins, a species found in Antarctica.

A 2010 study published in the journal Ethology analyzed 53 pairs of king penguins. Among these penguins, 28.3% of the birds showed signs of parrying and mating with birds of the same sex, but many ended up having a partner of the opposite sex. Among these couples, two same-sex couples had learned their partner's song, which is an important step in the twinning process.

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The keepers of the Odense Zoo finally recovered the gay couple's chick and brought it to their original parents, which led to a fight filmed on the Odense Zoo Facebook page, above.

A two-month-old king penguin sits next to his father in his bullpen at the Edinburgh Zoo in Edinburgh, Scotland. A parent will often stay with the chick until he is old enough to be alone. DAVID MOIR / REUTERS

But the zoo keepers decided to give the gay couple an egg from his mother who could not take care of her egg. The zoo does not currently know if the egg is fertilized, but if it does, the penguins should be able to incubate it successfully.

"There have been many cases in zoos and aquariums where this strategy has been used, so if an egg or chick has been abandoned by his parents," explained deNapoli. "When a same-sex couple seems to want to feed a chick, he gave eggs to same-sex couples who raised them successfully."