As for whether keeping the penguin in captivity could be a factor, de Waal posited that it might be a matter of choice and availability: "I'm not sure that captivity per se plays a role, but partner choice does. Like women in a nunnery or men on a big Navy ship, there's homosexuality in those cases."
The Chicago Tribune reported the news of the breakup last week.
Silo and Roy, who are both 18, began their unusual relationship in 1998. Both were relatively mature at the time and it is unusual for older penguins to bond with members of the same sex, Gramzay said.
Mating rituals
Gramzay said that he never saw them complete a sex act but that the two did engage in mating rituals like entwining their necks and vocalizing to one another. They tried to incubate a rock together in 1999, so a year later the couple was given an extra egg from another pair. Tango, a female, hatched later that spring. For the last two seasons, Tango has paired up with another female named Tazuni.
There are four other same-sex pairs at the Central Park Zoo, Gramzay said, including Tango.
A children's book detailing the once-happy family, And Tango Makes Three (Simon & Schuster), was published this spring and is sold at the gift shop at the zoo.
One of the authors, Justin Richardson, said he was not at all forlorn over the breakup. He said that he and his co-author, Peter Parnell, have been devouring the news and opinion on the split, and are amused by conservative Web sites, which, he said, "seem to think that we must be terribly chagrined."
"This has not been our reaction," he said. "We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families.
It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks."
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