Gay Penguins Fending Off Female Advances

Six gay penguins at a German zoo are still refusing to mate with females that were specially flown in from Sweden in 2005.

The zoo located in the German city of Bremerhaven has 10 male penguins, six of which have shown strong signs of preferring male company and have formed couples among themselves.

Seeing this, the zoo decided to undertake an initiative last year to "turn" the penguins and make them mate. The decision received a furious response from gay rights groups in the area. However, the zoo went ahead and had females of the species from Sweden flown in, hoping to bring the males to mate and help save the Humboldt species from extinction. But their initiative has not proven successful and the zoo has almost given up.

The director of the zoo says the problem is that the female Humboldt penguins have proven too shy in their advances. Heike Kueck said last year she was optimistic because zoo keepers had noticed that at one point a female penguin had managed to cause a couple of males to "separate".

"We will be delighted if the penguins form even one heterosexual couple and manage to produce first an egg, and then a little one", the zoo said. "But of course we accept the male couples that have formed and we are not trying to enforce heterosexuality, as we were accused of doing last year", referring to the outrage from gay rights groups.

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