Your Daily Dose of “Awwww”: Gay Penguins Adopt Orphaned Chick

Jun 5, 2009 | Filed Under: Animals,Other Photos | Tags: Animal Acts, Awwww

Break out the cigars and rainbow flags!

Z and Vielpunkt, two gay male Humboldt penguins at Germany’s Bremerhaven Zoo, are the proud new parents of a healthy penguin chick.

“Another couple threw the egg out of their batch. We picked it up and put it in the nest of the gay penguins,” veterinarian Joachim Schöne told the German newspaper Bild of the pair’s entry into parenthood. Z and Vielpunkt faithfully cared for their adopted egg for more than a month; in late April it hatched. Since then, they’ve been taking care of their chick around the clock; it’s still too young to feed itself, so the dads feed him fish mash, Schöne explained.

“Since the chick arrived, they have been behaving just as you would expect a heterosexual couple to do,” the zoo said in a statement.

Being the snappy dressers that they are, Z and Vielpunkt even sported tuxedos to celebrate the chick’s arrival.