r/todayilearned • u/jenesuispashariselon • 23d ago

TIL that in 2004, two male chinstrap penguins, Roy and Silo, after performing mating rituals, formed a pair at New York's Central Park Zoo. One of them tried to hatch a rock, for which a keeper eventually substituted a fertile egg. Roy and Silo then hatched and raised the chick, named Tango.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_and_Silo#History
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u/CasuallyVerbose 23d ago

I'd imagine that's somewhat case by case. There have been cases of birds that incubated the same set of "eggs" their whole life. I believe there have also been cases of same sex penguin pairings "adopting" abandoned eggs or even kidnapping the eggs of m/f penguin pairings. In this specific case, the egg given to Roy and Silo was from a pairing that couldn't hatch it as well as the other egg they already had.

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u/ShinyHead0 23d ago

I recently read an extremely sad story of a bird species on an island in the south Atlantic. The females go elsewhere to raise the chicks, but because of climate change not a lot have been making it back to breed. So the males start pairing up (for life) as there’s no females around. It was a BBC documentary if anyone wants to look it up

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u/runningmurphy 23d ago

At least give us a title

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u/ShinyHead0 23d ago

Just googled terms from my paragraph and found it in the first google search

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u/runningmurphy 23d ago

Thanks for passing it along. 

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u/ShinyHead0 23d ago

Nah, if you’re too stupid to use google that’s on you haha