Some things that are so serious that it would be unbecoming to poke fun at them. This is one:

Two “gay” male penguins have hatched a chick and are now rearing it as its adoptive parents, says a German zoo.

The zoo, in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, says the adult males – Z and Vielpunkt – were given an egg which was rejected by its biological parents.

It says the couple are now happily rearing the chick, said to have reached four weeks old.

The zoo made headlines in 2005 over plans to “test” the sexual orientation of penguins with homosexual traits.

Three pairs of male penguins had been seen attempting to mate with each other and trying to hatch offspring from stones.

The zoo flew in four females in a bid to get the endangered birds to reproduce – but quickly abandoned the scheme after causing outrage among gay rights activists, who accused it of interfering in the animals’ behaviour.

The six “gay” penguins remain at the zoo, among them Z and Vielpunkt who are now rearing the chick together after being given the rejected egg.

Yesterday morning when I was walking my dog – a 75lb golden retriever – we met a dog that was a mixed breed of cocker spaniel and poodle; a cockapoo, its owner informed me. The dog was mixed up in more than one way since, as soon as it spotted my dog, it decided to try and have sexual intercourse with my dog’s head – which was about the same size as the entire cockapoo – by enthusiastically humping it in a characteristically male way. My dog just stood and looked puzzled. It turned out that the cockapoo was a female; clearly a case of a gay dog’s essence being trapped in a bitch’s body, I thought. The owner of the transgender gay cockapoo was about to pull his amorous dog off my dog’s head when I stopped him. “Don’t!” I cried – “we mustn’t interfere with their behaviour ”.

Well, that last bit isn’t quite true.