A gay penguin couple is set to raise a “genderless” penguin baby at the London Aquarium. Or at least, that’s according to the lunatic humans who run the place.
“A same-sex penguin couple will raise an adopted ‘genderless’ chick for the first time, a London aquarium announced Tuesday,” CNN reports. “The four-month-old Gentoo penguin chick will not be named or characterized as male or female, Sea Life London said.”
Two of the park’s female penguins, Rocky and Marama, were reportedly given a third penguin’s egg to “relieve the penguin's birth mother of the pressure of raising two chicks,” the article explains. And according to park officials, the baby penguin won’t have a gender, marking him/her/zhe/per/[insert preferred pronoun here] "the world's first penguin to not have its gender assigned.”
“While the decision may ruffle a few feathers, gender neutrality in humans has only recently become a widespread topic of conversation,” aquarium officials said in a statement, per NBC. “However, it is completely natural for penguins to develop genderless identities as they grow into mature adults.”
I didn’t realize someone had taken a poll on the gender preferences of penguins, but it’s nice to see a zoo being so “woke.”
While baby penguins are traditionally given gender-specific names and marked with colored tags corresponding with their biological sex, Rocky and Marama’s adopted chick will be marked with a purple “genderless” tag, according to the park.
When asked why they decided to raise this baby penguin without an “assigned gender,” the park said it simply “made sense.”
“This was the first time we had successfully adopted a chick onto a same-sex couple and to mark the parenting achievements of Rocky and Marama in helping to develop the chick into a happy and healthy penguin,” Sea Life wrote in a statement. “It made sense to continue to allow it to be identified more naturally by staff and guests at the aquarium in the future.”