Watch: Two Gay Penguin Pairs at Australian Aquarium this Season
Sea Life Aquarium in Melbourne, Australia, announced that two same-sex pairs of gentoo penguins have started nesting together as the birds' mating season commences.
It may be late summer in the Northern hemisphere, but down under, it's still winter. Springtime isn't far off south of the equator, and that's when penguins pair up each year to build nests and tend eggs, news site The Hill noted.
Sealife Aquarium released the names of the two male couples, The Hill reported: "Tiger and Branston and Jones and Klaus."
Bird keep Tanith Davis told the Australian press, "As male-male pairs can't lay their own eggs, we will sometimes foster an egg to them from another pair.
"Sea Life Melbourne has had many same-sex couples in our breeding history, and they have been doting parents," Davis added.
Same-sex couples among penguins — both male and female — are common, and zoos and aquariums worldwide have celebrated them and, sometimes, given them eggs to care for. One celebrity couple is Sphen and Magic, a gay penguin pair at the Sydney location of Sea Life. "Sphengic," as the couple became known, hatched and raised a chick for the second year in a row in 2020.
One of the world's most iconic same-sex penguin pairings was Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins who got together at the Central Park Zoo in New York City in 1998 and stayed together for years. They raised a chick, Tango, who became the subject of a famed children's book.
10 News First Melbourne posted a video on the story on Twitter. Check it out below.