It was an egg-cellent surprise.
For the first time, a zoo in England saw two male Chilean flamingos hatch a chicklet together.
Although proud parents Authur and Curtis didn’t biologically produce their new offspring, Paignton Zoo bird curator Pete Smallbones said the little one, still to be named, is having the time of its life exploring the habitat.
“The parents are obviously doing a great job,” he told CNN.
“Regarding the same-sex parenting, we aren’t entirely sure how this has come about,” Smallbones added in a release.
The best possible explanation is that the egg had been “abandoned” by another flamingo pair and was “adopted” by the new loving parents, according to the curator, who noted that this is somewhat common among the species.
Paul Rose, a biologist at the Unversity of Exeter, told CNN that same-sex pairs are more common in captivity, but “hatching an egg is more unusual.”
“These two male flamingos were likely very keen to nest but could not attract a female partner, and so the same urge to nest brought them together.”
It typically takes 28 days for a flamingo egg to hatch, according to the zoo, which has many more still to crack.
They are then incubated on piles of mud nests by other parents — Arthur and Curtis in this case — and at first appear much more gray than their pink adult counterparts.
As for the parental instincts of the two fellas, that comes naturally, according to Cornell ornithologist Kevin McGowan.
“There is a grand desire to have kids, and these two guys [Arthur and Curtis] figured out how to do it,” he told CNN.
