Nature is accepting, nature is kind. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender or any other societal labels.
Recently, Viola and Electra, two female penguins and a same-sex couple welcomed their adopted chick in the Oceanografic Aquarium, Valencia, Spain.
The couple reportedly adopted the egg from another penguin couple and incubated it themselves, together. They took turns warming the egg.
Electra and Viola showed parenting instincts when they started building their own nest with stones. The significance of stones in the penguin community is immense.
Stones are used in mating rituals. Usually, the males often gift a stone to their potential suitor as a token to show affection.
Carlos Barros, the bird-keeper who has closely observed Electra and Viola’s love blossom, mentioned that they were an exceptional couple. They started showing breeding behavior when they built their nest together.
Keeping that in mind, the keepers decided to give them their own egg to raise.
They put two eggs each inside obviously without knowing they were not fertile, so we put one of the eggs from a different couple into their nest so that they could take care of it.
-Carlos Barros, The Bird-Keeper
The gender of this chick is not known yet as it can’t be identified until the little one is around six weeks old. This is however not the first time that a same-sex penguin couple has adopted an egg and parented a chick.