They are called Charley, Left-Arrow, Diagonal-Line and Six-Point. The four female penguins at Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany are at the centre of debate after being brought in to tempt ”gay” male penguins.
The zoo imported the penguins from Sweden last month after finding through DNA tests that three of their five existing pairs were all male.
The zoo had been mystified why its endangered Humboldt penguins had failed to breed, until they realised the males had paired off, the zoo’s director Heike Kück said.
Last year, two of the male pairs spent months sitting on a stone instead of an egg.
But the zoo’s decision to introduce females has sparked a furious response from gay and lesbian groups in Germany.
”All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been e-mailing and calling in to protest,” a spokesperson for Bremerhaven’s Zoo on the Sea in north-western Germany said.
Kück defended her decision to bring in the females, which, she said, had had little success in ”turning” the males.
”The central question is, are our penguins really gay or is it simply a lack of opportunity?” she told Der Spiegel. ”So far the males have scarcely thrown the females a single glance. The men have had the opportunity but haven’t done it.
”If the penguins really are gay then obviously they can stay gay.”
The experiment goes to the heart of a debate among biologists as to whether homosexuality exists in the animal world.
Scientists have found numerous examples of same-sex behaviour in emus, dolphins and pigs, while same-sex couples in other penguin species are also well documented. They include Eric and Dora, two King penguins who live together in Edinburgh Zoo.
On Monday Heiner Klös, a biologist at Berlin’s Zoo, said: ”The pairs show signs of courtship but they don’t actually get round to mating. So I don’t think we can say that they are actually gay.”
In case the existing males show no interest in reproduction, the zoo has also flown in two new male penguins, ”so the ladies don’t miss out altogether”, Kück said. – Guardian Unlimited Â