This breeding season at Sydney Sea Life Aquarium, two penguins have thrown caution to the wind and become the aquarium’s first gay penguin couple.
Sphen and Magic, plus a third penguin who isn’t gay (yet).
Sphen and Magic are two Gentoo penguins who have developed a strong bond, waddling around and swimming together in their exhibit. As breeding season approached, they started collecting pebbles to create a nest. Their keepers have given them a dummy egg so they don’t feel excluded from breeding season, and to help them develop their incubating skills.
The staff were so impressed by the care they gave to the dummy egg that they gave them a real egg to foster from another penguin couple who’d had two.
According to the aquarium, the pair make an excellent team – Sphen is older and already very good at incubating, while Magic is younger and still learning. The aquarium has dubbed the pair ‘Sphengic’.
Sphen and Magic aren’t the first gay penguins in captivity; in the late 90s, Roy and Silo at New York’s Central Park Zoo made headlines around the world when they were observed performing mating rituals, even going so far as to try and hatch a rock as if it were an egg.
Roy and Silo inspired a Will & Grace episode, ‘Birds of a Feather Boa’, where Will and Jack team up to help prevent a gay penguin couple from being separated.
But perhaps more well-known to millennials is Parks and Recreation’s ode to gay penguin love, ‘Pawnee Zoo’. In the episode, Leslie Knope performed a wedding for the gay penguins, and drew the ire of the town’s more conservative residents.
True love is what brings us together today.
In the end, the penguins were moved (together!) to a different zoo, so it had a happy ending.
A proud parent.
Anyway, you can check out a video of Sphen doing the penguin equivalent of proposing here: