Same-sex flamingo couple ‘adopt’ abandoned chick

It has been more than 20 years since the first gay couple adopted children in Britain but attitudes have changed more slowly among flamingos.
Curtis and Arthur, two male residents at Paignton Zoo in Devon, have been celebrated as trailblazers after becoming the first male flamingo couple to have adopted a chick on British soil.
Zoo staff said that they were unsure how two males had helped to hatch an egg, suggesting that the most likely explanation was that it had been abandoned by another couple.
Farah Adaci, a zoo spokeswoman, said that Curtis and Arthur could also be guilty of theft.
“We believe the most likely scenario is that the egg was abandoned by another couple, so Arthur and Curtis adopted the egg. There are other possibilities too, such as the egg being stolen from another nest.
“Same-sex parenting is also a known phenomenon among Chilean flamingos, as well as other bird species. Flamingos are social animals that thrive in large flocks, and therefore pairing up is a natural behaviour. Sometimes flamingos are drawn to another from the same sex. It could be for companionship or friendship needs.”
The offspring were the result of “love lagoon”, an initiative named after the reality television show Love Island, to better document flamingo couples as they paired up over the summer.
The zoo has 51 flamingos and the public were encouraged to name them in a social media campaign.
“One of the reasons we asked the public to help name our flamingos earlier in the year was so we could better observe their behaviour over the breeding season, and this is the first time we have observed this phenomenon at this zoo,” Adaci said.
Other named flamingo couples that have hatched chicks include Florence and Flame, Frenchie and Del and Flossie and Lando.
The success of the breeding programme is a testament to Paignton zoo’s commitment to the conservation of the flamingos, which are classified as a near-threatened species.
“The team are thrilled by the success of this year’s breeding programme overall, as it is the first time we’ve had chicks since 2018.
“We are also all incredibly intrigued by the adoption from a behavioural research point of view, and is a cherry on top of what has been a great year for our flamingo flock so far, because it means one more chick being raised by attentive parents.”
Flamingo eggs hatch after approximately 28 days of being incubated on mud piles by both parents.
Native to South America, and commonly inhabiting brackish and alkaline shallow lakes, the chicks appear quite different from their adult counterparts and are covered in grey, downy feathers.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the species as near-threatened as their population is in decline due to many threats.
Human intrusion into habitats causing abstractions of water for irrigation projects, habitat disruption from mining and quarrying, hunting and egg harvesting can all be attributed as among the many factors contributing to the decline.
The first human gay couple to adopt children in Britain were Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, who had twins born to a surrogate mother in 1999. They were the first same-sex couple to win the legal right to be named on a birth certificate as parents.
Users of Twitter/X celebrated the flamingo adoption. Josh Luke Davis, a natural history writer, wrote with delight that Curtis and Arthur as “gay flamingos are raising a chick in Paignton Zoo”.
There is no evidence that the couple have a sexual relationship but the species has been embraced as a mascot by some in the gay community.
In an article about plastic flamingo lawn ornaments, the New York Times described how they had become a symbol of “transgression of social and cultural convention”.
Same-sex animal parenting is not new in the animal kingdom. There are many animal species where the phenomenon has been witnessed and well documented with animals in captivity.
In 2022, it was reported that a pair of male Humboldt penguins, Elmer and Lima, from New York, became the first same-sex penguin parents at Rosamond Gifford zoo in Syracuse.
As a vulnerable species, the pair were given an egg to incubate as part of the zoo’s Humboldt penguin programme and were tasked with sitting on, hatching and raising the chicks of breeding pairs not as well-equipped for the job.
However, penguins are not the only bird species following this path to raise their young — the phenomenon has also been seen in vultures, according to reports.
Outside of captivity, same-sex parenting between males has not been commonly observed, but in captivity there have been examples similar to those seen in penguin species.
A foster scheme was also established in 2017 with a pair of male griffon vultures, who successfully hatched an abandoned egg that other vultures would not care for at the Artis zoo in Amsterdam.
It was the zoo’s first successful hatching in five years, and the vulture, raised by the pair, was then released into the wild in 2018 as part of the conservation programme.
Meanwhile, on Oahu, an island in Hawaii, it was reported that 31 per cent of pairings of Laysan albatrosses were made up of two unrelated females. After mating with male albatrosses, the female pairings are known to raise chicks together.