Proving once again that the animal kingdom is queer as hell, a pair of gay Chilean flamingos just hatched a chick together at a British zoo.
The flamingo couple, who are named Curtis and Arthur, live at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England. The proud parents’ newborn chick is one of several to have hatched at Paignton this year, marking the zoo’s first new generation of Chilean flamingo chicks since 2018. This year, Paignton Zoo has been documenting its flamingo pairs on Instagram through its series “Love Lagoon,” an homage to the reality dating show Love Island.
“Regarding the same-sex parenting, 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,” Paignton Zoo Curator of Birds Pete Smallbones said in a statement shared to the zoo’s website. “The most likely scenario is that the egg was abandoned by another couple, so this pair have ‘adopted’ it.”
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I was going to suggest immaculate bird conception, but gay adoption is great, too! As Smallbones alluded to, queer flamingo parenting isn’t new. Back in 2021, gay flamingos Hudson and Blade adopted a chick at Bedfordshire, England’s Whipsnade Zoo after it was abandoned by its biological parents.
As Whipsnade Zoo Curator of Birds Gary Ward explained in a blog post at the time, flamingo chicks don’t need a mother to survive. Both male and female flamingos are able to feed their young using “crop milk,” which is made in their digestive tract and contains blood cells, fat, and protein to nourish growing chicks.
News of Curtis and Arthur’s growing family comes just a few months after the science journal PLOS One found that same-sex behavior among animals is “widespread” yet underreported. Well, hello! Let’s celebrate that.
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