A London aquarium said it is planning to let a same-sex penguin couple raise an unnamed “genderless” penguin.
Sea Life London announced Tuesday the four-month-old chick will be raised by two female penguins Rocky and Marama but will not be assigned a gender. The aquarium claims it is “the world’s first penguin to not have its gender assigned,” according to CNN, though it admitted that any future breeding of the penguin will be determined based on “the gender its biology determines.”
The aquarium claimed the new genderless chick is a “completely natural” way for penguins to develop.
“While the decision may ruffle a few feathers, gender neutrality in humans has only recently become a widespread topic of conversation, however, it is completely natural for penguins to develop genderless identities as they grow into mature adults,” Graham McGrath, the general manager at the aquarium, said. “What makes us really proud at the aquarium is the success of Sea Life London’s Gentoo breeding program and the amazing job of same-sex penguins Rocky and Marama who took the chick under their wing and raised it as their own.”
The penguin will be identified with a special purple tag. Same-sex penguin parent couples have also been used in other zoos around the world, including New York and Sydney, Australia.
Charlotte Barcas, an aquarium worker, told Sky News that she hoped the genderless penguin would serve as a opportunity to “raise the whole conversation with guests who come here to the aquarium, to raise that exact point that there is a difference between gender and sex.” She went to say that she wanted guests to meet the penguin without “any sort of preconceived gender roles.”
The Sky News anchors inquired what gender roles could realistically be applied to a penguin. “It’s not like the boy penguins are playing football and the girl penguins are doing the knitting or something?”
“I think that’s the key thing,” Barcas replied, claiming that “you don’t really see” gender roles being assigned in the animal kingdom. “Penguins would have to have some sort of society where other penguins were potentially putting pressure on little baby penguins that they should be more masculine or more feminine.”
