"The Truth Is Often Quite Surprising... Why Are We Here?"

Gay Flamingo Couple Adopt Newborn Chick Abandoned By Its Biological Parents

A pair of gay flamingos at Edinburgh Zoo has adopted the chick after its biological parents knocked it out of the nest

Sylvia Tan
11 October 2014

A pair of salmon-pink male Chilean Flamingos has adopted a fluffy grey newborn chick after it was knocked out of the nest by its parents.

The newborn is one of five Chilean Flamingos babies to Edinburgh Zoo's flock of 33 adult birds this year, following successful breeding for the first time since 2010, reported the Mirror.

Senior bird keeper Nick Dowling was quoted as saying: 'We weren't short of drama in the flamingo flock this year.'

'When the first egg arrived the parenting couple got really excited and accidentally knocked it off the nest - their natural instinct was then to abandon the egg.'

He added that while the zookeepers don't usually intervene with their flamingo flock, but as it was the zoo's first egg since 2010, a zookeeper carefully picked it up and placed it back on the nest.

'Luckily, one of our same sex male couples went straight onto the nest, fostered the egg and raised it as their own.'

Colin Oulton, team leader at the zoo's bird section, said, 'We've been able to utilise these male male bonds and it's working out fairly well. Male male pairs are equally able to rear youngsters.'

Native to South America, their wild population has been recorded at around 300,000. The species is labelled as 'near threatened' on the IUCN Red List as it is increasingly under threat from habitat loss, egg-harvesting and hunting.

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What do you think...?

Some biologist theorize that the reason same-sex attraction and bonding is observed in countless species (including man) is that this is nature's way of providing a back up plan, a pool of surrogate parents if you will, to ensure the survival of the species... 

Jesse Bering has famously conjectured that this phenomena explains the gay "super uncle/aunt" behavior that you see gay men and women exhibit.  In my own life, I know that I was a "gay super uncle" to my nieces and nephews. I contributed a great deal of time, effort and resources to helping ensure that my sister and brother-in-law's children had all the advantages that I could help provide.  I was in fact so involved in their young lives that as infants, they learned to say "uncle" before they said "daddy."

I do believe that Darwin would say this is the reason why we are here despite the fact that "we" don't typically contribute our genes directly to the preservation of our species.  We nevertheless do our part by rearing the unwanted and the abandoned and thereby ensure that albeit indirectly, we contribute an evolutionary advantage to our species.

"Fear Eats the Soul"