2 male flamingos become same-sex foster parents raising baby chick at San Diego Zoo
"The pair has perfected their fatherly duties," zoo officials announced.
Two male lesser flamingos are officially first-time dads after fostering a chick at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, officials confirmed.
The two male lesser flamingos are now fostering a chick after "showing off their parenting skills with a dummy egg earlier this year," read a statement posted on the San Diego Zoo Safari Park's social. "Wildlife care specialists sneakily swapped a fertile egg into their nest, allowing another pair of flamingos to double-clutch and raise a second hatchling."
Flamingos typically lay "one large, chalky white egg in a mud nest build like a sand castle by the parents," the zoo said.
A parent then sits on the mound -- which can reach up to 2 feet in height – and the nest is usually surrounded by a trench as further protection from rising water, zoo officials said.
"At hatching, a flamingo chick has gray down feathers and is the size of a tennis ball. It also has a straight, pink bill and swollen pink legs, both of which turn black within a week," the San Diego Zoo said.
The two fathers have been fantastic parents so far since the announcement last Friday, zoo officials confirmed.
"The pair has perfected their fatherly duties by alternating brooding responsibilities and keeping the chick satisfied thanks to a hearty helping of crop milk every day," said the San Diego Zoo.
The chick is expected to stay on the nest mound for 5 to 12 days officials said, and during this time, the chick is fed a type of "milk" called crop milk that 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," the San Diego Zoo said. "The begging calls the hungry chick makes are believed to stimulate the secretion of the milk. As the parents feed their chicks the crop milk, they are drained of their color—so much so that their plumage turns a pale pink or white! The parents gain this color back eventually as the chicks become independent and eat on their own."
When the chick is old enough and the two dads stop feeding the chick, the baby flamingo will be fed the special pellet diet that is made for all of the zoo flamingos at the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
"This food has all the nutrients the flamingos need and a pigment that helps keep them 'in the pink,' officials said. "To allow the flamingos to eat in their normal way (taking in water and then pumping it back out), a water source just for feeding is near their food so they can get a "beakful" of water and then food—just like they would in the wild."
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