🕯️ LEGENDS GARDEN
🐧 Sphen
Gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) · SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium, Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia
Lives in Legends Garden
Sphen and Magic, two male gentoo penguins, paired off during the 2018 breeding season and made global headlines as 'the penguin power couple'. Keepers gave them a dummy egg, then a real one from another pair, and they successfully raised chicks Sphengic in 2018 and Clancy in 2020. Unusually for gentoos, the two stayed together outside the breeding season for six years. Sphen died in August 2024 at nearly twelve; when keepers let Magic see his body, Magic sang, and the rest of the colony sang back.
What they do
An ecstatic bow: head thrown right back with beak open and both flippers spread wide, then a deep forward bow that drops a pebble at his partner's feet..
Steady and devoted - always waiting at the same rock for the same penguin.
Lore
- ★Sphen and Magic paired up in the 2018 breeding season and were given a dummy egg first, then a real one from another pair.
- ★They raised two chicks: Sphengic in 2018 and Clancy in 2020.
- ★Gentoo pairs usually separate outside breeding season; these two could be found together year-round for six years.
- ★Their story reached books, documentaries, a school syllabus and a Sydney Mardi Gras float.
Helping the real one
💛 Support Sphen via SEA LIFE TrustVerified working donate page. SEA LIFE Trust is the partner charity of the SEA LIFE aquariums including Sydney, registered in England & Wales (charity no. 1175859), and funds marine conservation, the Iceland beluga sanctuary and the Cornish Seal Sanctuary. Note it is the aquarium group's conservation charity, not a fund for Sphen himself. This opens their own official page. Money never touches this site.
Where this comes from
- SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium Vale Sphen ↗
- CBS News Gay penguin Sphen dies at Australia aquarium, leaving behind partner Magic ↗
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