Same-sex foster parents raising flamingo chick at San Diego Zoo

Two male flamingos are now first time dads after they hatched an egg together at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

The pair had been sitting on a fake egg earlier this year and, after showing off their parenting skills with the fake egg, care specialists decided to give them a real egg, according to the zoo. The chick, born late last month, is now “thriving.”

“The pair has perfected their fatherly duties by alternating brooding responsibilities,” the zoo wrote in a social media post. 

The flamingo dads

The two dads are in their 40s, according to the zoo. They’re both lesser flamingos, a species found in sub-Saharan Africa and western India. The chick is also a lesser flamingo. 

Lesser flamingos grow to be 2.6-2.9 feet tall and grow to weigh 3.3 to 4.4 pounds, according to the zoo. At hatching, a chick is about the size of a tennis ball and has gray down feathers instead of the distinctive pink. 

The lesser flamingo foster parents raising the chick were sitting on a nest earlier this year, according to the zoo. Care specialists gave them a fake egg as a way to keep them occupied and stop them from interfering with other nests. The flamingos did such a good job caring for their fake egg that the wildlife specialists decided to give them a real, fertile egg. 

The foster dads have been feeding the chick crop “milk,” which comes from the parents’ upper digestive tract. 

“Both males and females can feed the chick this way, and even flamingos that are not the parents can act as foster-feeders,” according to the zoo. “The begging calls the hungry chick makes are believed to stimulate the secretion of the milk.”

Feeding chicks can actually impact the color of the parents’ feathers. Feeding can drain the color and their plumage will appear pale pink or even white until the chick becomes independent and eats on its own.

The foster dads will start to wean the chick when it’s around two months old. 

Birds and their babies 

The flamingos aren’t the first to care for fake eggs. An eagle at a Missouri bird sanctuary went viral after he tried to hatch a rock. Vulture dads have hatched eggs together and so have penguin dads. 

Earlier this year, two male flamingos at a U.K. zoo —named Curtis and Arthur— hatched a chick. At the time, the zoo said it wasn’t sure how the flamingos had acquired the chick.

“Regarding the same-sex parenting, we aren’t entirely sure how this has come about, although it is a known phenomenon in Chilean flamingos as well as other bird flocks,” Paignton Zoo Curator of Birds Pete Smallbones said. “The most likely scenario is that the egg was abandoned by another couple, so this pair have ‘adopted’ it.”