#sea life sydney aquarium

[galerymod]

Vale Sphen | 2012 - 2024

The gay penguin Sphen has sadly passed away in Australia.

He was a real star, enchanting internet users and zoo visitors alike. Sphen was a gay penguin who raised two chicks together with his partner Magic. And now, at the grand age of eleven, the animal has passed away.

The gay gentoo penguin Sphen, who became known worldwide for his social life, has sadly passed away. In a heartwarming announcement, the Sea Life Aquarium in the vibrant Australian city of Sydney revealed that Sphen lived to be almost twelve years old—a remarkable lifespan for a gentoo penguin. Sphen and his partner Magic were the picture of a faithful couple, together for six years and proud adoptive parents to two adorable chicks. Sphengic and Clency.

Even outside the breeding season, Sphen and Magic were always together! This is unique for gentoo penguins. The influence of the penguin couple as a symbol of equality was immeasurable. Sphen and Magic made an appearance in the Netflix series 'Atypical' and were featured in books, documentaries and the New South Wales state curriculum, the aquarium recalled.

There is no wrong sexual orientation. Everyone has a right to decide what their sexual orientation is.

mod

In the spirit of 'equality among equals', if it is consensual, it cannot be judged by others.

Freedom is always based on a commitment to the rights of others.

[r-i-o0]

As a non-professional paleontologist, I agree with this. This is real.

- A dinosaur autistic

(ACTUAL RANT IN THE TAGS BARE WITH ME)

Okay so like we’re all away that queerness is everywhere in nature right? Like every animal has some form of queer relationships formed within the species? Okay cool now hear me out

Gay dinosaurs

Like I’m not a palaeontologist by any means (can’t even spell the word apparently) and I’m not entirely sure if we’ll ever be able to fully understand dinosaur behaviours, but since queerness is so prevalent in nature in the modern day, surely it goes back far enough to the dinosaurs right?

T-Rex? Gay.

Stegosaurus? Bisexual.

Triceratops? Lesbian.

Raptor? Asexual.

You see you understand you get me

[rjzimmerman]

A same-sex penguin pair captured hearts. After one died, the other sang. (Washington Post)

Sphen, right, and Magic at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. (Sea Life Sydney Aquarium)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

Sphen and Magic were a boundary-breaking same-sex couple, raising two offspring, helping increase awareness about rainbow families and inspiring a float at Sydney’s famed Mardi Gras Pride parade.

They also happened to be penguins.

When Sphen died this month at the ripe old age — for a Gentoo penguin in captivity — of nearly 12, Magic looked at his beloved mate and began to sing, setting off the entire penguin colony at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium in a moving tribute song.

“The loss of Sphen is heartbreaking to the penguin colony, the team and everyone who has been inspired or positively impacted by Sphen and Magic’s story,” Richard Dilly, the aquarium’s general manager, said in a news release Thursday.

It is not uncommon for penguins to form same-sex bonds. Scientists first encountered same-sex behaviors during penguin mating season in field studies more than a half-century ago. Such behaviors have also been observed among penguins at zoos in Berlin and Toronto, and at New York’s Central Park Zoo, which inspired the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three.”

[pohutukosplay]

Pōhutukaryl Cosplay as Lanturn Pokémon

photoshoot with Cassa's Creative Shots SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium July 18 2024

buy me a Ko-Fi?

[gone2soon-rip]

SPHEN (2013-Died August 22nd 2024,at 11).Sphen and Magic were two male gentoo penguins at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. After meeting in 2018, they adopted and raised two chicks together, becoming internationally famous and symbolic for the Australian gay rights movement. Sphen died in August 2024, at the age of 11.Sphen and Magic - Wikipedia

[actualhumancryptid]

In the wild when one penguin dies and their partner doesn’t know what has happened, they will typically go searching for them. Howell said this is why keepers at the aquarium felt it so necessary to show Magic that Sphen had passed, so he could understand “his partner wouldn’t actually be returning”. The keeper said it was an incredibly emotional moment when Magic was taken to Sphen, alongside the gentoo colony and all of the staff members. Magic immediately started singing, with all the penguins around him joining in the chorus. “It was a very beautiful moment, the air was just filled with their singing,” Howell said. “It showed the impact [Sphen] had on his partner and that [Magic] actually recognised that his partner was there. “Soon after, he became quite protective of his partner and that was a very emotional time for us, but we needed to do that in order for him to hopefully comprehend what had happened.” Howell said staff at the aquarium had never seen anything like this occur before, so they aren’t entirely sure what the singing means. “But in that moment for us, it was a beautiful send-off.”

----

dear god this broke me a little, imagining this little penguin being taken to see his partner's body, and having to comprehend he's not coming back.

[orcinus-veterinarius]

idk if you’d find this interesting but i think you might so i’ll share it. i hope it’s not bothering you! but i’ve learned a lot about cetacean captivity from following you and it’s made me interesting it getting other professional opinions on the matter. today i went to visit the sydney sea life aquarium in australia and the aquarists were patient enough to let me pick their brains a bit, specifically about the toki situation. interestingly enough, sealife’s parent company is explicitly anti cetacean captivity, enough so that they run a sea pen for two belugas in iceland that originally came from an aquarium that they acquired in shanghai. the marine biologist that let me bother her with my dumb questions is one of the trainers for their dugong so she has a fair bit of experience with marine mammals and she told me that her personal opinion is that toki doesn’t have the immune system for wild release and most likely isn’t going to survive a year. so a lot of the same stuff you’ve said. idk, i just thought it was interesting that even professionals who are generally anti cetacean cap (or who work for organizations that are) don’t think that it’s a good idea. sorry if you don’t really care or if this is obvious lol i just thought of you after talking with her :) as thanks for reading my long winded ask, here’s a picture of the dugong, pig, during a training session!

Hi Pig! What a cutie!

@local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti acutally used to work at this aquarium, so she can probably speak on it better than I can. I posted about the beluga sanctuary here, but basically, my opinions on SEA LIFE are *rolls eyes*. As far as aquariums go, they're fine. Their US locations are AZA accredited, but they're pretty middle-of-the-road in my opinion. I've only been to one location and wasn't overly impressed.

I also don't like the idea that fish are somehow less important and less deserving of exceptional welfare than more charismatic species like cetaceans. Sharks in particular need a lot of specialized care. But SEA LIFE is more than happy to put them in shopping malls (I don't know about the one you visited, but all their US locations are literally in malls) and publicly slander other far superior aquariums for housing cetaceans.

Of course, this is all directed at Merlin Entertainment managment, not the aquarists and trainers on the ground, who sound like they know their stuff!

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

A FINDING NEMO Memory or Two

FINDING NEMO was one of the first films I actually really anticipated a long while before its release.

As a kid, I would often start anticipating movies once I saw a trailer in theaters during one of my frequent movie theater visits, and then that would be it. Whenever I was on the Internet, I wasn't frequenting movie news sites or anything like that. If anything, the release of FINDING NEMO had me going on those sites more often to see what was coming. What the news was...

I first saw concept art for FINDING NEMO in a DK-published hardcover book called DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE. I had gotten it as a birthday gift in October 2002. I was immersed into that book, a chronological tour through Disney feature film and even park history, throwing in television stuff as well. The page spreads so inviting, and so many great images and stills from the movies, made for really well put-together arrangements. My well worn-out copy is still with me.

The final page spread detailed movies then slated for 2003 and 2004... Only concept art for FINDING NEMO appeared, no stills from the actual movie. The images depicted were Nemo peaking out from behind a coral, Marlin and Dory looking at Sydney Opera House, and a long stretch of Nemo inside the dentist office fish tank. These images completely engrossed me. Just this colorful fish movie, incoming: I always had a thing for the underwater world anyways, between the many animal books I had as a kid to the nature documentaries I'd often see on like Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and such. I was taken to two big aquariums in home state every year or so, and was always fascinated and mesmerized by all those tanks, all that aquatic life. I had PC games about it, and there was also - semi-related - that Titanic phase I went through... The ocean, the sea, it's all very neat.

(As an add-on, the other movies on that page spread were PIGLET'S BIG MOVIE, THE JUNGLE BOOK 2, HOME ON THE RANGE, and BROTHER BEAR back when it was called "BEARS".)

Then, I got MONSTERS, INC. on DVD for Christmas... And when I saw that a teaser trailer for the movie was ON THERE?? I watched it over and over, along with just about everything else on that 2-disc DVD set...

I was all about FINDING NEMO, and I caught it on opening weekend... and loved it so much, I saw it two more times in theaters, which is something I rarely got to do as a kid back in the day. Then I was somehow able to rent it the Friday before its Tuesday DVD release. Rented it, over and over, til I got the DVD and VHS for Christmas. At the time, I didn't have a DVD player in my room, it was only in the family room and my mum's room... So the VHS sufficed, despite no bonus features! In early 2004, after winning a $200 gift card to Circuit City (lol, remember that? No? You might be a young'un reading this!) from a spelling bee, I bought an extension for my Xbox - which I also got for Christmas - that allowed me to play DVDs in my room. Yes, we kids/preteens of the early 2000s had it rough, haha.

On a personal note, this movie came out when my life was in a weird flux, and I was in a part of growing older that didn't go so smoothly. Not to divulge too much, but when you're autistic, neurodivergent, and you're coming of age in the early aughts... Not the nicest time, for sure... Yeah, things weren't easy... And at the end of the year, when the movie was finally out on DVD, I was going through a very big family loss. My first one, really... So, I really gotta hand it to FINDING NEMO for being one of the things that really helped get me through all of it... Just keep swimming, indeed...

Similarly, director Andrew Stanton's sophomore Pixar effort, WALL-E, got me through another tough time in my younger days...

I would say FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS, INC. made me fall in love with the work coming out of Pixar, especially in those early days when it was the movies being made exclusively by the Lasseter circle. As a little kid, I wasn't really that much into the TOY STORY movies, but I did like A BUG'S LIFE and played the PlayStation game quite a bit. MONSTERS, INC. I remember being a blur in the theaters for other reasons... But I asked for MONSTERS, INC. on video the year after because I did remember enjoying the door vault chase, so that was enough to make me want the disc and to watch it again. I got the DVD that Christmas, and as said earlier, I think the combination of that film, the FINDING NEMO teaser and the NEMO concept art in the DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE book turned me into a cultist for the Luxo lamp in December 2002, haha.

Then I went back to TOY STORY and TOY STORY 2, which I had on VHS, and gave those a proper re-watch. Now that I was 10, knew what computer animation was and how it was made, and having more of an appreciation for the way visual stories were told than I did at - say - age 6 or even 8... And I fell in love with both. Then I rented A BUG'S LIFE over and over until I was able to buy the DVD... I wanna say it was sometime in 2003, maybe early 2004, but it was the "Collector's" set DVD that promoted FINDING NEMO with a giant sticker on the shiny slipcover. Hell, if I remember correctly, I bought it at a Suncoast Motion Picture Company outlet in a mall... Back when there were more than... 4 of those across the country!

And then some 9 years later, I went and saw the 3D re-release... Surprisingly, for a movie made in 2003, it was converted wonderfully to 3D. The 3D actually added a very subtle but very immersive depth of field to many of the underwater scenes, it looked fantastic. So yes, I saw FINDING NEMO four times in theaters. I'd probably see it a fifth if it gets re-released for whatever reason, again.

It's a favorite of mine.

Hey, I once did a video essay on it, too!

Happy 20th Anniversary.

[umichenginabroad]

Spiders and Wallabies and Leeches, Oh my! (Week 3)

From the massive spiders to the venomous snakes, people can’t stop talking about all the creatures of Australia. To be honest, as much as I don’t like being around spiders, I’ve been itching to see some wild species here that I won’t be able to find anywhere else in the world. Though, I wasn’t exactly itching to see them in my Airbnb. My hostel mates and I had just arrived to our new home for the next 4 days in the Gold Coast when a giant brown Huntsman spider decided to show us around what was apparently its humble abode. As much as we wanted to see a big spider, we didn’t want to live with it, so a quick cup-and-paper-slide maneuver moved it outside. I guess the large spiders of Australia are itching to see some Americans as much as we are itching to see them!

The next two days at the Gold Coast, the Miami of Australia (there is quite literally an area called Miami Beach), were full of more beaches and nightlife. When I first stepped foot on Burleigh Heads Beach I felt like I was on another planet. The shore went on for miles and curved around with the city skyline in the distance. The water was so shallow and the wave current pulled at us like a horse at a carriage. We felt like we’d wandered onto a planet from Star Wars. Unfortunately, the beach we were at didn’t have the best conditions for surfing so we left that endeavor for another time and just let the beauty sink in. The next day at Rainbow Bay Beach proved similar with just as incredible views and even a rainbow to satisfy the name.

Pictured above are the vast Burleigh Heads Beach and Rainbow Bay beach.

Our final day at the Gold Coast warranted a trip to the nearby Springbrook National Park. It being my first time in an Australian rainforest, I was determined to see a koala munching on some leaves, but my attempts at manifestation came to no avail. Instead, on our way out of the park, two hopping wallabies (which we first thought were baby kangaroos) chose to make my day. Just moments earlier we had bumped into a family that told us kangaroos are as common in Australia as deers are in the US - a fact I could not believe until 5 minutes later when I thought I saw my first kangaroo.

One of the two hopping wallabies!

Another guest appearance on the hiking trip was the leech! And by “the leech!” I mean the formidable, constant flow of tiny leeches that plagued us from the ground, water, and air. I managed to evade them all, but my mates were not so fortunate and had a lot of battles with the relentless blood-sucking monsters. I left the Gold Coast content with the fact that I had come face-to-face with the largest spider I’d ever seen as well as the fact that the largest spider I had ever seen was thousands of miles away from Coogee beach.

A few days later I finally saw my first koala and kangaroo at the Sydney WILD LIFE zoo followed by the SEA LIFE aquarium. I was very excited by all the marsupials, and my personal favorite, the Tasmanian Devils. The creatures of Australia are truly one-of-a-kind and I can't wait to see more in the wild!

David Bayer

Biomedical Engineering

University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia

[nomiijane]

Sydney Part Two: Tower Eye, Sea Life Aquarium, Madame Tussaud’s & Bondi Beach! 🐟🏳️‍🌈☀️ (at Sydney, Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpe5rfDrdVd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lizardbytheriver]

Zookeepers at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, said the same-sex male pair, Elmer and Lima, were chosen to be foster parents for an egg laid by a female penguin.

Elmer and Lima formed a pair bond for the current breeding season, built a nest together and even defended their territory. So the zoo decided to test out their fostering capabilities. ... According to the zoo, Elmer and Lima were exemplary parents and took turns incubating the egg until it hatched on New Year’s Day. The pair have been brooding – aka warming – and feeding their chick since its birth. ...

Fox shared that he hoped the same-sex penguin pair could help “people of all ages and backgrounds” can relate to animals.

“Elmer and Lima’s success at fostering is one more story that our zoo can share to help people of all ages and backgrounds relate to animals,” he said.

In recent years, penguins have been incubated by same-sex foster parents at zoos across the world.

Sphen and Magin, the gay penguin “power couple” at Sea Life Sydney, celebrated their third anniversary earlier this year. The pair welcomed their first chick back in 2018 and hatched their second egg in 2020.

In 2019, a lesbian penguin couple at Sea Life London aquarium hatched a little chick during Pride month. The female Gentoo penguins were given the egg by staff after another penguin mother couldn’t handle her two other babies.

Gayness, Gay Individuals, Gay Couples, and Gay Parents are all found throughout the Animal Kingdom. Penguins/Birds are separated from Humans through millions of years of evolution. And yet, gayness and queerness exist in both groups. Gayness is Natural. Homophobia is not Natural. Congrats to Elmer and Lima. Congrats to Sphen and Magin. Whether it be Gay Humans or Gay Penguins, its good to see Gay Folks thriving and even startin' families! Article from January 31st, 2022 (Baska, 2022)

[pohutukosplay]

Pōhutukaryl Cosplay as Lanturn Pokémon

photoshoot with Cassa's Creative Shots SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium July 18 2024

buy me a Ko-Fi?

[pashterlengkap]

Gay animal couples have a lot to teach us about love, life, and grieving

Same-sex coupling is not the sole province of us homo sapiens. Neither is mourning the death of our partners.  When Magic the penguin recently died, its same-sex partner Sphen mourned by singing, and their rookery joined in.  Related These 31 openly gay pets will melt your cold, dark heart We scoured two animal-obsessed Insta reels for the most utterly heartwarming moments. “We’re not entirely sure exactly what was being said in these moments of singing, but it was definitely a beautiful moment to witness,” Renee Howell, the aquarium’s penguin keeper told Australia’s ABC. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today In 2018, their courtship became international when the two male gentoo penguins — a power couple at the aquarium — exhibited more than a mere bromance.  Their romance and inseparable bond amazed their caretakers at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.  Sphen and Magic’s six-year relationship is not unusual because same-sex penguin coupling is common, and gentoo penguins are for being romantic, monogamous, and equalitarian in their division of labor: especially in nest building, feeding, fostering, and raising chicks. Same-sex coupling is not a new phenomenon in the animal world. However, its disclosure and acceptance have grown in recent times, especially since, back in the day — just like LGBTQ+ love — it was closeted, pathologized, and erased. During the summer of 2005, more than a year after same-sex marriage became legal in the state, Boston’s beloved pair of swans in the Public Garden — named Romeo and Juliet — began a love affair that dared not speak its name. As Bay Staters bantered and bickered over whether the two should be allowed to stay together or be separated, these swans were being subjected to the same queries that have plagued same-sex couples in heterosexist societies for centuries. Assuming that the swans were heterosexual until one of their eggs went unfertilized, Boston’s Parks and Recreation Department decided to conduct a “detailed gender test” by examining the swans’ reproductive organs. The findings disclosed that Romeo and Juliet were really more like Juliet and Juliet. The city disclosed its findings, but very reluctantly, “for fear of destroying the image of a Shakespearean love story unfolding,” The Boston Globe reported. Some people, like Laura Elsheimer of Hudson, Massachusetts, told the Globe that the city zoo “should have a Romeo.” Spokeswoman Mary Hines of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department told the Globe, “Each year when the swans go in, the kids immediately come to us and say,’ Which one’s Romeo and which one’s Juliet?'” However, neither girl swan lamented, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Why? Because on any given day at the Public Garden, you could see them swimming happily together in the lagoon. Moreover, the swans had been cohabiting for two years. Animal scientists have observed the monogamous nature of swans, whether they’re in opposite-sex or same-sex coupling — they stay with their mates until death, which can occur between 20 and 30 years. In 2024, sadly, the Christian Right still holds to its premise that homosexuality is an aberrant behavior and found only in those lost few. However,  Bruce Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity” was cited by the American Psychiatric Association in a “friend of the court” brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Lawrence v. Texas case that led to state anti-sodomy laws being found unconstitutional. According to Bagemihl, homosexual activity occurs in more than 450 species of animals, both in the wild and in captivity, and same-sex couplings in animals can be as enduring and lifelong as they are in humans. For the religious fundamentalists, however, these findings are discarded on the premise that man can fight such “animal” same-sex… http://dlvr.it/TChKfb

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

Pour one out, Tumblr

[thoughtlessarse]

Sphen the gentoo penguin - one half of a world-famous same-sex "power couple" - has died in Australia, aged 11. He and his partner Magic shot to global stardom in 2018 when they fell in love at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, later adopting and raising two chicks. Their romance has inspired a Mardi Gras float, been referenced in Australia's education syllabus, and even featured in the Netflix series Atypical. The Sea Life Sydney Aquarium said Sphen had an "immeasurable" impact around the world as a symbol of equality and a conduit for the conservation cause. The penguin's health had deteriorated in the days leading up to his death, and the aquarium's veterinary team made the difficult decision earlier this month to euthanise Sphen to end his pain and discomfort. An investigation into the cause of his decline is underway. "The loss of Sphen is heartbreaking to the penguin colony, the team, and everyone who has been inspired or positively impacted by Sphen and Magic's story," the aquarium's general manager Richard Dilly said in a statement. "We want to take this opportunity to reflect and celebrate Sphen's life, remembering what an icon he was." A sub-Antarctic species, gentoo penguins on average live between 12 and 13 years and are famously romantic monogamists. Magic, 8, has been taken to see Sphen's body to help the penguin understand his partner will not return. He immediately started singing, the aquarium said, which was reciprocated by the broader penguin colony.

continue reading

[re-discover-communication]

Y'all I just found out

So there was a couple of gay penguins in the SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, Sphen and Magic, who raised two chicks called Sphengic (2018) and Clancy (2020)!

But Sphen has died yesterday. Magic sang for him during the "funeral" and so did the whole colony of penguins.

Go Sphen, teach the angels how to noot noot 🌈🌈🌈