Who knew? Wonder if this is true with humans.
A pair of gay penguins thrown out of their zoo colony for repeatedly stealing eggs have been given some of their own to look after following a protest by animal rights groups.
Last month the birds were segregated after they were caught placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs.
But angry visitors to Polar Land in Harbin, northern China, complained it wasn’t fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.
[…]
‘We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they’ve turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,’ said one of the keepers.
[…]
‘It wasn’t fair to stop them becoming parents and keep them apart from all the other birds just because of the way nature has made them.’
‘It wasn’t fair to stop them becoming parents and keep them apart from all the other birds just because of the way nature has made them.’ /// Like the penguins themselves, this would never fly in America. We have a firm christian based value system that built this country that requires gay penguins to be eggless. This affront to god will ruin normal penguin relationships probably leading to global warming in retribution.
Stoopid Hoomans.
The real affront is that we’re humanizing these animals. They’re animals. They’re ANIMALS. Stop interfering.
Penguin marriage is threatened by this radical action.
PC correct title. How about “Baby abducting gay penguins claim normal penguins offspring”…
#4 absolutely right… then raising those poor chicks in the Gay Penguin Lifestyle… the horror…
Sounds like a dead end to me! 🙂
So if put in terms of humans instead of penguins, you have humans stealing other humans children because they can’t have their own?? Don’t those stories get reported as baby snatching??
Follow #5’s train of thought to its conclusion –>> A gay couple kidnaps/steals/abducts another couples child then wants to raise them as their own.
(I sense movie of the week! Get Glen Close on the phone!)
‘We decided to give them two eggs from another couple whose hatching ability had been poor and they’ve turned out to be the best parents in the whole zoo,’ said one of the keepers.
Actually, Stinker, it’s more like a gay couple rescuing a kid from bad parents and giving him love and affection that his biological parents couldn’t give. If you want to be true to the story.
Tomorrow’s Focus on the Family headline: “Even Nature is unnatural!”
Of course they’re better parents, for starters their kids are not accidents.
Nat’l Geographic Magazine just filmed these frigid flamers organizing a march across the ice flow dressed in leather chaps & feather boas.
What amazes me is that they substituted rocks for the eggs they were trying to abduct. This seems like behavior that is neither instinctive nor learned.
Please don’t tell me the devil made them do it.
Of course they’re better parents, for starters their kids are not accidents.
Considering that these species have instinct driven behavioral rituals they perform for the express purpose of producing offspring, I’m not sure they are surprised when they get pregnant, even if they were smart enough to know what the concept of an “accident” is.
This whole story is ridiculous. Protests from animal rights groups? Seriously?
What amazes me is that they substituted rocks for the eggs they were trying to abduct. This seems like behavior that is neither instinctive nor learned.
It’s no different than when a mother’s chick dies early on and she attempts to steal the chick of another.
#14 Sea Lawyer wrote “It’s no different than when a mother’s chick dies early on and she attempts to steal the chick of another.”
The difference I see is that in your example, it’s the simple, direct replacement of something lost. With the penguins, there is an attempted deception with something that’s somewhat similar, but certainly not identical.
#15, hmm, i see your point.
Gay??? … How do penguins butt-f**k?
Or are we retreating to older versions of the word, where it meant frivolous and light hearted?
So much to learn about queer lifestyles.
Like how old must a kid raised in their homes be before you first shove it up their rears.
# 15 Gary, the dangerous infidel said, “The difference I see is that in your example, it’s the simple, direct replacement of something lost. With the penguins, there is an attempted deception with something that’s somewhat similar, but certainly not identical.”
Kinda like the Cuculidae being brood parasites.
#8 Actually I see it more as the Government (Zoo Keepers) took the children (eggs) away from their biological parents to give the ‘gay’ ones a chance. There isn’t any rescuing, just theft given some other name, then sanctioned by the powers that be.
(Ok, this is taking things a bit far, but isn’t the idea of gay penguins taking things a bit far?)
From the blurb on the book “Biological Exuberance” at amazon.com.
Bruce Bagemihl writes that Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity was a “labor of love.” And indeed it must have been, since most scientists have thus far studiously avoided the topic of widespread homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom–sometimes in the face of undeniable evidence. Bagemihl begins with an overview of same-sex activity in animals, carefully defining courtship patterns, affectionate behaviors, sexual techniques, mating and pair-bonding, and same-sex parenting. He firmly dispels the prevailing notion that homosexuality is uniquely human and only occurs in “unnatural” circumstances. As far as the nature-versus-nurture argument–it’s obviously both, he concludes. An overview of biologists’ discomfort with their own observations of animal homosexuality over 200 years would be truly hilarious if it didn’t reflect a tendency of humans (and only humans) to respond with aggression and hostility to same-sex behavior in our own species. In fact, Bagemihl reports, scientists have sometimes been afraid to report their observations for fear of recrimination from a hidebound (and homophobic) academia. Scientists’ use of anthropomorphizing vocabulary such as insulting, unfortunate, and inappropriate to describe same-sex matings shows a decided lack of objectivity on the part of naturalists.
#18 Paddy-O, brood parasitism is an excellent example of deceptive behavior in animals, but it still may fall short of the mark set by these penguins. First of all, let me disclose my complete lack of biology and animal behavior credentials. Even so, brood parasitism seems to be common and well-known in certain species, which indicates instinctive and/or learned components. These penguins seem to have taken everyone by surprise with their “outside the box” behavior (I’m tempted to say thinking) amongst penguins, substituting a rock for a stolen egg.
I guess the question is, are these crafty little individuals inventing new behavior, or is this a newly-discovered characteristic of the species?
I’m still waiting to see if there are any good linux jokes to be made (can’t think of any myself) 😉
pedro, we’re talking about homosexuality and you’re hyperventilating again. You know who does that? Closet cases who can’t accept their own homosexuality. Just sayin’… maybe a little introspection is in order.
Way to go Pedro 🙂
You might have something there. 🙂
#11
March of The Empresses?
Cursor_
Gay??? … How do penguins butt-f**k?
That should be the new subtitle of this blog.
Again bloggers are getting agitated whenever a positive gay story pops up and are missing the whole point by getting lost in the semantics.
The point is that same sex parenthood occurs in nature and is therefore not ‘unnatural’, by definition. Wether penguins make good parents or not is an entirely subjective value judgment designed to add positive spin to the argument.
#29
Agreed, there’s always a couple of trolls (and a self hating latino) that spend the whole time throwing stones.
Christians could use homosexuality to defy Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by simply doing this question: If gay animals don’t have offspring how come there’s always a fixed percentage of occurence in the natural world?
#17 – Kemo Sabe
>>Gay??? … How do penguins butt-f**k?
Haw haw haw! Wait until you tell that one to the kids in the tree fort! That’s a real keen joke!!
Hey, good drinking buddies can raise children too, you know.
Anyway, nothing a hot babe can’t fix as was the case with Silo, the inspiration for one of the penguin’s in the illustration above.
“Silo promptly moved in with Scrappy, building a new nest with her. Zookeepers were at a loss to explain Silo’s sudden conversion.”
http://tinyurl.com/arusn
Anne Heche can relate.
RBG
#31 I suspect a penguin may have sneaked in during the night and replaced your brain with a rock.
The morality of baby snatching penguins is not the issue here. You cant reasonably apply human values to penguins. Besides, the same evil baby snatchers will often adopt orphan chicks and care for abandoned eggs (I saw it on TV – it must be true). The issue is that in nature, same sex parents are not uncommon and do a perfectly adequate job of it. I don’t see why humans are any different in that regard.
There is no good or evil in nature. These are subjective human constructs that have been hijacked by organized religion for their own (often nefarious) purposes.