Two Gay Australian Penguins Are Now Proud Parents!

Even in the animal kingdom, gay couples make some of the best and most loving parents!

With many penguin eggs often getting abandoned by distracted parents, the managers at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium in Australia had the idea to provide their colony's only same-sex penguin couple with an egg of their own, reports the New York Times.

After seeing the pair—named Sphen and Magic—successfully display extraordinary parental behavior on a dummy egg given to them as a test, the managers of Sea Life Sydney gave the penguin dads a very real egg that was neglected by it's biological parents.

And this past October, Sphen and Magic became happy parents when the egg finally hatched, bringing a new baby chick (aptly named Sphengic) into the world!

Sphen and Magic have become some of Australia's two biggest animal celebs, and are now patron favorites across the country. During Australia's brutal gay marriage debate in recent years, the two sort of became the unofficial face for marriage equality, NYT also reports. (After all, if a penguin colony can have same-sex unions, a human nation should definitely allow it!)

"Everyone likes penguins," Tish Hannan, who is in charge of penguin supervision at Sea Life Sydney, told the Times. "They’re so cheeky."