26 Oct, 2018 15:16

‘Love has no boundaries’: Same-sex penguins become perfect parents for baby chick

A same-sex penguin couple defied the odds as it welcomed the birth of a 91-gram baby chick after incubating and fostering its egg for almost five weeks.

It all started when Magic and Sphen, a pair of Gentoo penguins at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, started to show interest in one another.

They were seen “constantly waddling around and going for swims together” when the breeding season started.

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Their bond became more evident when Sphen gave Magic a pebble, the equivalent of proposing in the penguins’ language of love.

After that, they were given a dummy egg to see if they could look after it with the right care.

When it became clear that the two were perfect at parenting, they were given a real one, the aquarium said in a statement released on Friday, a week after the chick’s birth.During incubation, one would incubate the egg while the other guarded their nest on pebbles.

“Baby Sphengic has already stolen our hearts! We love watching the proud parents doting and taking turns caring for their baby chick,” said the supervisor of the aquarium’s penguin department.

People took to Twitter to hail the birth of the chick, whose sex remains unknown as the only way to identify a penguin’s gender is by using a DNA test, something too risky to carry out on the newborn as it requires a blood sample.