He said yes! Gay penguin proposes with 'special stone' and now couple are expecting their first egg hatching!

Hope Schreiber
·Writer


While humans call this time of year “cuffing season,” to penguins it is breeding season.

One particular couple at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium has garnered a lot of attention on social media by becoming the aquarium’s first gay penguin pair. And rumor has it the relationship is serious.

Sphen and Magic are the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium’s first gay penguin couple — and they’re expecting. (Photo: Sydney Aquarium via YouTube)
Sphen and Magic are the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium’s first gay penguin couple — and they’re expecting. (Photo: Sydney Aquarium via YouTube)

According to the aquarium, Sphen and Magic, gentoo penguins, were inseparable before the breeding season began and were “constantly seen waddling around and going for swims together.” (#Goals — my new Tinder profile is going to read “Enjoys long waddles on the beach.”)

Then the staff at the aquarium noticed that the two male penguins were more than just friends when the duo started to collect pebbles and create a nest together. Presenting these pebbles are the penguin equivalent of proposing — and Sphen and Magic have more pebbles than any other couple. According to ABC Australia, the couple would also bow to each other, which means “I love you.”

The nest of pebbles keeps their eggs warm, and a gentoo couple will take turns incubating the egg or scaring off anyone who would dare steal a pebble.

Sphen and Magic were provided with a dummy egg so they could practice their parenting skills, and according to the aquarium, “they were absolute naturals and displayed great care for their egg.”

“They immediately knew exactly what it was and started incubating it and we’re really, really happy,” Tish Hannan, the aquarium’s penguin department supervisor, said.

They were such great penguin parents, they are now fostering a real egg from another couple that had two. Gentoo penguins can often care for only one chick at a time, and the second one will typically die — but now the second chick will have two dads.

This isn’t the first gay penguin couple to make the news. Roy and Silo of New York City’s Central Park Zoo raised an egg from another penguin that could not hatch it, and after six happy years together, and as penguin couples are wont to do, Roy and Silo had a conscious uncoupling.

Many people on Twitter were quick to accept this beautiful love story and to compare it to a scene from Parks and Recreation in which Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope accidentally marries a same-sex penguin couple and a member of the Society for Family Stability Foundation demands she annul the marriage.

Of course, the haters are gonna hate on 20GayTeen.

Let me tell you, there seems to be a lot of penguin experts out there on Twitter.

LET MAGIC AND SPHEN LIVE!

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