Buddy and Pedro A pair of gay penguins is to be split up, but keepers at Toronto Zoo insist it's simply because they are trying to preserve the species. Pedro, 10, and Buddy, 20, were brought to the Toronto Zoo this year from Pittsburgh’s National Aviary to "pair-bond" with a couple of eligible females, but they bonded with each other instead. Zookeepers now report seeing the pair snuggling, calling to each other and displaying courtship behaviour. "The two girls have been following them; we just have to get the boys interested in looking at them," said Tom Mason, curator of birds and invertebrates at the Toronto Zoo has told the National Post. With Pedro and Buddy’s species on the cusp of extinction, Mr. Mason insists that the Toronto Zoo cannot afford to let a season go by without passing on the pair’s genes. “If [Pedro and Buddy] weren’t genetically important, then we’d let them do their thing,” he says. In the 1990s, an estimated 225,000 African penguins lived in the wild. Now the number is closer to 60,000 - and dropping fast. "We have to keep an eye on the population all the time, because if we let things slide we could lose the population forever," Mason says. If Petro and Buddy manage to inseminate female partners, Toronto Zoo says once breeding season is up they will likely be able to reunite.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 8th November 2011 - 3:41pm