Gay Flamingos Successfully Hatch Chick
Curtis and Arthur, a gay flamingo couple at the Paignton Zoo, are the latest same-sex couple to raise a chick hatched from an abandoned egg.
A male flamingo couple successfully adopted an egg and hatched a chick from it.
The same-sex couple, Curtis and Arthur, are believed to have acquired the egg after it was abandoned by one of the opposite-sex flamingo couples at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, England.
The Chilean flamingos successfully hatched the chick, which remains unnamed for the time being.
“We aren’t entirely sure how this has come about, although it is a known phenomenon in Chilean flamingos as well as other bird flocks,” Pete Smallbones, curator of birds at the zoo said in a statement.
Flamingo eggs hatch after an approximately 28-day period, during which they are incubated on mud pile nests, with both parents taking turns sitting on the nests.
The chicks hatched from the eggs are covered in gray, downy feathers, and appear different from their more colorful adult counterparts.
Currently, only three other couples — Florence and Flame, Frenchie and Del, and Flossie and Lando — have hatched chicks. However, that marks success for a species that is listed as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The flamingos’ numbers are dwindling in their native South American habitat due to egg harvesting, disturbances from tourism, and lithium mining, which drains saltwater lakes where the flamingos make their homes.
Smallbones has noted that while there are only a handful of flamingo chicks presently, there are plenty of other eggs currently incubating — which should result in additional hatchings.
“We are pleased at the success of this year’s breeding program so far,” Smallbones said. “It’s a testament to the skill and hard work put in by the Bird Team and we are hopeful that we may see more eggs hatch over the coming days and weeks.”
This year’s group of chicks are the first to be welcomed at the zoo since 2018.
Prior to mating season, the Paignton Zoo had sought to engage the public and pique their interest in the flamingos housed at the zoo through a naming contest.
The contest was part of a larger campaign, dubbed the “Love Lagoon” initiative that sought to document the flamingo couples’ mating behaviors and the hatching of eggs resulting from such unions. Those developments have been chronicled on the zoo’s Instagram channel.
The successful hatching by Arthur and Curtis isn’t the first time that a same-sex couple has stepped in to help raise and foster baby chicks. In 2022, two gay flamingos at the ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in England adopted a chick that had been previously abandoned by its biological parents.
Other bird species, including penguins and swans, have not only exhibited same-sex behavior but have helped hatch eggs and raise the chicks who emerge from them. The presence of such same-sex bird couples highlights the diversity of animal behaviors and challenges the notion that homosexuality is not innate within animals.
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