Sphen the gentoo penguin, best known as one half of a much-beloved same-sex power couple and parenting duo at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, has died at the age of 11 – and left behind an impressive legacy.
“The loss of Sphen is heartbreaking to the penguin colony, the team, and everyone who has been inspired or positively impacted by Sphen and Magic’s story,” the aquarium’s general manager Richard Dilly said in a statement seen by the BBC.
Alongside partner Magic, Sphen first hit the headlines back in 2018, when the breeding season saw the pair’s romance begin to flourish.
“We’d go over there, and Magic and Sphen would be bowing to each other,” Tish Hannan, the aquarium’s penguin department supervisor, told ABC News at the time. “Bowing is a gentoo way of saying they love each other, which is super cute.”
That love led to them building a pebble nest ready for an egg like the other penguin couples in the colony, and not wanting them to miss out, staff at the aquarium gave them a dummy egg to look after.
When it became apparent that they’d passed the parenting trial shift with flying colors, Sphen and Magic were given a real egg from another couple and successfully incubated and raised chick Sphengic (after their ship name) in 2018 and later Clancy in 2020.
Not only did their relationship go beyond the strength of the bond usually seen between gentoo penguin couples – “[T]hey could even be found together outside of the breeding season, which is unique for gentoo penguins,” said Sea Life Sydney in a statement – but it also made them icons of equality, with their fame bringing attention to the prevalence of same-sex relationships in the animal world.
“They inspired a Mardi Gras float, have been included in the NSW education syllabus, and even featured in the Netflix series Atypical. Countless books speak of their love story, even documentaries on same-sex animal couples have featured Sphen and Magic,” said the aquarium.
Though reported much less frequently by scientists than it is found, same-sex behavior in the animal world is common, with a recent study finding that it’s been reported in over 1,500 animal species so far, although according to author of A Little Gay Natural History, Josh Davis, it is likely far more.
“Whilst it has only been officially recorded in around 1,500 species, this figure is likely a massive underestimate,” Davis said in a recent interview with IFLScience. “This is because it can be found in pretty much every branch of the evolutionary tree, from beetles and butterflies to turtles and squirrels, so the idea that it is limited to just a few hundred species out of the 2.13 million described to date is incredibly unlikely.”
Although penguins are perhaps some of the best known examples – Sphen and Magic aren’t the only famous couple – same-sex behavior, including parenting, has been found beyond birds too, including in mammals, fish, and insects.
Add to that the awareness that Sphen’s fame brought towards conservation, and you get a small bird leaving behind one huge legacy.
Source Link: Sphen, One Half Of Famous Same-Sex Penguin Power Couple, Dies Aged 11