London aquarium’s gender-neutral penguin just predicted Jeremy Corbyn will win the election
Gentoo penguins at London’s Sea Life Aquarium, ready to predict the next UK prime minister. (Sea Life)
Penguins at London’s Sea Life aquarium – including gender-neutral penguin Ziggy – have gone to the polls ahead of tomorrow’s UK general election.
The feathered friends have predicted a win for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
After much deliberation, the feathery voters waddled to their favourite candidate and predicted that Corbyn will take the reigns as our new prime minister.
The Gentoo penguins were given the choice of three candidates all vying for the top job – Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Jo Swinson.
Graham McGrath, general manager of Sea Life London Aquarium, said: “While there was definitely something fishy about how the penguins’ chose their favourite candidate, it was exciting to watch our penguins get involved in making a fun political prediction. We look forward to finding out if their prediction was the right one when voters go to the polls this week.”
Ziggy, a penguin being raised by lesbian parents that has not been assigned a gender by the Sea Life aquarium but is being raised gender-neutral, was one of the feathery voters.
Aquarium staff decided it would more natural to allow Ziggy to grow into an adult as genderless, which is normal in the wild until they mature.
Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan was so offended at the decision to raise Ziggy as gender-neutral that he took to identifying as a “two-spirit penguin”.
Sea Life aquarist Charlotte Barcus told Sky News at the time that the fact that gender “isn’t an issue to penguins” is the point, and that the gender neutral penguin was meant to start conversations about gender with aquarium visitors.
She said: “What we wanted to do was raise the conversation with guests who come through the aquarium… that there is a difference between gender and sex.”
For the first time ever for this general election, other Sea Life centres also ran polls for their residents to vote for the next prime minister.
In Great Yarmouth, penguins predicted a Lib Dem win tomorrow.
But, in Weymouth – to the surprise of literally no one – the otters have forecast a hung parliament.
