Zoo Uses Aversion Therapy 'To Cure' Gay Penguins
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: February 8, 2005 5:01 pm. ET
http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/02/020805penguins.htm
(Bremen, Germany) A German zoo is trying "to cure" three gay penguin couples using a form of aversion therapy. The Bremerhaven Zoo is splitting up the couples, and has imported four female penguins from Sweden which it will use to try to "turn" the penguins "straight".
The three gay couples are part of the zoo's 10 penguin exhibit. The others are apparently straight and coupled. But, for more than a year zookeepers were mystified why the three couples didn't have any offspring.
They did the usual courting dances, built nests together, appeared to have sex, and still no little penguins. Finally they did a DNA test to see if there was something genetically wrong. That is when they discovered the three couples were all male.
Zoo director Heike Kueck said each of the males will be given special secluded separate quarters and a female will be introduced. They will rotate the females to see which pairings "click".
Gay penguins are not unusual. New York's Central Park Zoo, has Roy and Silo, who have been together for several years. As with one of the couples in Germany Roy and Silo put a rock simulating an egg in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens.
Gay penguins have also been found in Japan. Scientists at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, found about 20 same-sex pairs at 16 major aquariums and zoos in Japan.
Aversion therapy "to cure" homosexuality in human has run the gambit from shock therapy to isolation with females and has never worked.
Even Kueck is skeptical it will work in her penguins. But, she said that the attempt has the support of the European Endangered Species Program because the penguins, which are native to South America, are an endangered species.
In New York, attempts to introduce females to Roy and Silo failed although the two no longer spend time together. Roy for a while spent time with another penguin, this time a female, but that too has apparently ended.
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