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Take out a big bucket of party fish!
A pair of gentoo penguins of the same sex greeted the birth of their first baby, uh, chick, together, announced Thursday the Sydney Aquarium Sea Life Aquarium.
Dads Sphen and Magic, a couple dubbed "Sphengic", received an egg that they incubated and protected for nearly five weeks in their nest. The small fluffball hatched last week and weighed 3.2 ounces. His gender must be determined – a blood test will be given when he is a little older.
Tish Hannan, head of the penguin department at the aquarium, was thrilled with the way the lovebirds were busy with their new heap of joy.
"On the first day, the youngest of the two males was an absolute star, he fed the chick a lot," Hannan told ABC. "The older male looked a bit disinterested at first, but as soon as he became a chick, he also did an amazing job, so we are really very proud of them."
The egg was given to Sphengic by another couple who laid two eggs during the 2018 breeding season. According to an aquarium press release, gentoo penguins, who live mainly in the sub-islands, Antarctica, only have enough resources to take care of one of their two eggs in the wild. The "emergency chick" often dies, and the aquarium found by giving the egg extra to Sphengic was the best option for its survival.
The first 20 days of a gentoo penguin's life are extremely vulnerable and it is up to his parents to keep him healthy, which means that he will be fed 10 times a day. Gentoo parents keep their eggs warm on pebble nesting rings, rather than keeping their feet like royal penguins do.
Hannan told ABC that gentoo penguins had "a strong desire to be parents", regardless of their gender, and that same-sex pairing within the species was not rare.
Yet, male-male couples rarely have the opportunity to be parents.
"With female-female couples, what will happen is that these women will actually mate with males, come back and lay eggs, and both females will raise the chicks," she said. she said. "With both males, they sometimes try to steal unoccupied eggs, so that can happen but it's not very likely."
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