Gay flamingos are both family men

Carlos and Fernando, male flamingos at the Slimbridge wildfowl reserve in Gloucestershire, are inseparable.

They have been together for more than five years and have even reared foster chicks.

Twice a year they perform the elaborate courtship dance usual to males and females, before building a nest.

Homosexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom but few people know about it, according to zoologists. Keepers at Slimbridge said it was unique among their flamingos.

Nigel Jarrett, the reserve’s aviculture manager, said: “They seem very happy. They will probably stay together for the rest of their lives.

“They are not picked on by the other birds. If anything they are afforded more respect because two males together can be a pretty fearsome prospect for the other flamingos.”

The pair have reared three generations of adopted flamingos, by making off with the freshly laid eggs of their heterosexual neighbors.

Mr Jarrett said: “They have been known to fight the heterosexual birds and steal their eggs. There is usually a ‘handbags-at-10 yards’ moment where they scrap with the couple before stealing the egg.

“They are very good parents though and behave just as the heterosexual birds do when rearing their young.”

The pair are Greater Flamingos, native to the Mediterranean and Africa, and live on algae and small fish.

As well as male flamingos that mate, there are male ostriches that only court their own gender. Film-makers recently caught female Japanese macaque monkeys engaged in intimate acts.

Male penguins have been known to pair up and engage in sexual activity, while ignoring potential female mates.

Adrian Walls, a bird keeper at London Zoo, said: “Homosexual behaviour is often seen amongst birds in captivity, but it is not often long-lived. If they go a long time without chicks, they often search out a different sex partner.”

Gay penguins steal eggs from straight couples

The two penguins have started placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs, in a bid to hide their theft.

But the deception has been noticed by other penguins at the zoo, who have ostracizedPicture 2 the gay couple from their group. Now keepers have decided to segregate the pair of three-year-old male birds to avoid disrupting the rest of the community during the hatching season.

A keeper at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China explained that the gay couple had the natural urge to become fathers, despite their sexuality.

“One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite this being a biological impossibility for this couple, the natural desire is still there,” a keeper told the Austrian Times newspaper.

“It’s not discrimination. We have to fence them separately, otherwise the whole group will be disturbed during hatching time,” he added.

There are numerous examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but gay penguins have captured the public’s attention more than any other species.

A German zoo provoked outrage from gay lobby groups after attempting to mate a group of gay male penguins with Swedish female birds who were flown in especially to seduce them. But the project was abandoned after the males refused to be “turned”, showing no interest in their would-be mates.

In 2002 a couple of penguins at a New York zoo who had been together for eight years were “outed” when keepers noticed that they were both males.

‘Gay’ penguins rear a chick in German zoo

Two homosexual penguins have successfully hatched an egg and are now proudly rearing the chick, a German zoo has said. The zoo, in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, says the adult males – Z and Vielpunkt – were given an egg which was rejected by its biological parents.

It says the couple are now happily rearing the chick, which has reached four weeks old.

“Z and Vielpunkt, both males, gladly accepted their ‘Easter present’ and began straight away with hatching the egg,” said a statement from the zoo.

“Since the chick arrived they are behaving in the same way as one would expect a heterosexual couple to do. Both happy fathers are now diligently handling the everyday care … of their adopted offspring,” the zoo said.

Z and Vielpunkt are part of a six-strong gay community among the zoo’s collection of endangered Humboldt penguins who rose to fame in 2005 when four Swedish females were brought in an unsuccessful, and controversial, attempt to “cure” them.

Three pairs of male penguins had been seen attempting to mate with each other and trying to hatch offspring from stones.

“Homosexuality is nothing unusual among animals,” the zoo said. “Sex and coupling up in our world do not necessarily have anything to do with reproduction.”

The Humboldt penguin is normally found on the coast of Chile and Peru, but numbers have dropped to between 12,000 and 20,000 as industrial fishing methods have led to dwindling stocks of the anchovies on which they feed.

There have been previous reports of exclusive male-to-male pairings among penguins, some of which have also included the rearing of chicks.

Other animals may simply exhibit a “drive to mate”, while others may, like humans, enjoy non-procreative sexual activity.