SYRACUSE, N.Y. (1010 WINS) — A Syracuse zoo is celebrating a special penguin chick who was the first to hatch from an egg cared for by two male penguins who are now raising the chick together.
The penguin baby hatched on Jan. 1 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo as part of the zoo’s renowned Humboldt penguin program which has a colony of 28 birds.
The foster parents, Elmer and Lima, were both also hatched at the zoo in 2016 and 2019. The two formed a bond during the current breeding season.
Though the zoo has utilized foster parents to incubate eggs in the past, Elmer and Lima are the zoo’s first same-sex couple to do so.
But not all foster parents are good at their jobs. The zoo has had at least two cases of breeding pairs unintentionally breaking their fertilized eggs.
“It takes practice,” the zoo’s director, Ted Fox, said.
“Some pairs, when given a dummy egg, will sit on the nest but leave the egg to the side and not incubate it correctly, or they’ll fight for who is going to sit on it when,” Fox added. “That’s how we evaluate who will be good foster parents — and Elmer and Lima were exemplary in every aspect of egg care.”
The chick’s biological mother, Poquita, laid an egg with a viable embryo inside with her partner, Vente, on Dec. 23. Zoo staff decided to swap the egg out with a dummy egg and allow Elmer and Lima a chance to incubate it. The two excelled at their role—taking turns incubating the egg until it hatched—and have been caring for it by warming and feeding the chick ever since.
“Once they have experience doing this and continue to do it well, they will be considered to foster future eggs,” Fox said.
Other zoos and institutions have found success in same-sex penguin foster parents—including the Berlin Zoo, the San Francisco Zoo and the Oceanogràfic Valencia aquarium in Spain where a female pair fostered an egg.
Fox said Elmer and Lima can teach us a lot of things, including that the idea of “family” is not species specific and success in child-rearing is not not reserved for traditional families.
“Elmer and Lima’s success at fostering is one more story that our zoo can share to help people of all ages and backgrounds relate to animals,” he said.
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