Australian penguin dies, famous “same-sex power couple” dies

A famous Australian penguin known for raising chicks as part of an unusual same-sex pair has died, a Sydney aquarium said Thursday.

Male gentoo penguins Sphen and Magic caught the attention of zookeepers and then the world in 2018 when they built a nest out of pebbles together.

Eventually, they received live eggs from other penguin pairs to incubate, from which the chick Sphengic hatched in 2018 and Clancy two years later.

The Sealife Aquarium said Sphen, the older partner of the same-sex penguin power couple, died shortly before his 12th birthday, which is considered a long life in captivity.

Sphen and Magic became gay icons in Australia and abroad, inspiring a float in Sydney's Mardi Gras parade and featuring in the Netflix sitcom Atypical.

However, there were also critics. In conservative circles it was said that the penguins were being inadvertently abused to advance a political agenda.

Unlike many mammal species, male and female penguins assume equal parenting roles and share parental duties 50:50.

Same-sex pairs between males and females are not uncommon, although in the wild they are often short-lived.

It was not the first time that same-sex penguin pairs in captivity had adopted eggs; a handful of zoos around the world have reported similar cases.

In 2009, two male penguins – Z and Vielpunkt – in a Berlin zoo successfully hatched and raised a chick that had been rejected by its heterosexual parents.

Before them came Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at a New York zoo who were often observed attempting to mate with each other.

sft/arb/ssy