Denver Zoo's Male Flamingos Lance Bass & Freddie Mercury Are a Couple

In a Pride Month post, the Denver Zoo announced that Freddie and Lance have been together for five years.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

June 12 2019 10:30 AM EST

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The Denver Zoo celebrated Pride Month this week with a Facebook post about two male flamingos, Lance Bass and Freddie Mercury, who have been in a relationship since 2014, according to CNN.

"Did you know that Denver Zoo is home to a same sex flamingo couple? Chilean flamingo Lance Bass and American flamingo Freddie Mercury have paired up for several years," the Denver Zoo wrote on Facebook.

"While these two males won't be able to have a chick of their own, they are able to act as surrogate parents if a breeding pair is unable to raise their chick for any reason," the post continued.

Freddie and Lance have been acting out courtship rituals like "headflagging" and living together in nest mount they built on a communal island, said Mary Jo Willis, one of the Denver Zoo's bird experts.

The bird couple is also intergenerational. Freddie arrived at the Denver Zoo in 1978 and is about 49, while Lance hatched in 2001.

Before becoming a couple with Lance, Freddie was with an American female flamingo, according to CNN.

Same-sex bird couples are fairly common, considering that same-sex penguin couples at Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium in Kerry, Ireland, currently outnumber opposite-sex couples.