This has got to be a joke. Not the part about the gay penguins, but the part about the gay-rights protestors.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A plan by a German zoo to test the sexual appetites of a group of suspected homosexual penguins has sparked outrage among gay and lesbian groups, who fear zookeepers might force them to turn straight.

"All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been e-mailing and calling in to protest," said a spokesman for the zoo in the northwestern city of Bremerhaven on Friday.

He said the zoo concluded the penguins might be gay after seeing male penguins trying to mate with other males and trying to hatch offspring out of stones.

German media reported that female Swedish penguins would be brought to the zoo to test the theory, but when word got out about the plan, the phones started ringing.

"Nobody here is trying to break-up same sex pairs by force," the zoo's director Heike Kueck told public broadcaster NDR. "We don't know if the three male pairs are really gay or just got together because of a lack of females."

Seems to me that the zoo is simply trying to find out whether this lavender-penguins business is what they call "situational homosexuality", like at British boarding schools (I love a good stereotype as much as anyone) or in your average prison. Also, one would assume that the zoo is hoping that the hot Swedish bikini penguin babes will produce fertile eggs and baby penguins. Finally, let me remind unsuspecting readers of La Vanguardia that these Swedish penguin babes are obviously from a Swedish zoo rather than from the frozen Antarctic ice shelves of Lapland.