If you were trying to find a biologist hard at work, the main Horizon conversion facility in Animalia would be a good place to look. Alongside all the new Animalians and their friends and family members, there were always plenty of scientists milling around, and not just the ones who worked there. The Animalia virus contributed immensely to science's understanding of the animal kingdom, so it was no surprise that a place like this would draw interested researchers from across the country and around the world. And it was always easy to spot a visiting scholar who had come from some distant place - notepad in hand, hurriedly jotting down all the observations they could, as if they'd never seen one of these transformations happen up close before.
A typical specimen of the type was the human who was sitting anxiously in one of the waiting rooms just now, fidgeting with a stack of papers. A Goat Animalian wearing a lab coat approached him curiously and leaned in against the neighboring chair. "Nice to meet you," she said pleasantly. "I don't think I've seen you here before. What's your project?"
The man, slightly startled, looked up from his notes and stared back at her. Any Animalian would recognize that look - the wonder in a newcomer's eyes upon seeing such a different creature right in front of him. But he quickly cleared his throat and regained his composure. "I've been working with this small zoo in Massachusetts for my doctoral thesis," he said, his enthusiasm growing at any chance to talk about his research. "Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, they've been forced to remove some of their exhibits, and they decided that sending the animals here was the most humane option. But what I'm most interested in observing is the penguins. They're in there now."
"Oh, we already have some penguin Animalians around here," the goat replied. "I think you'll probably find them at the Ice Haus on a hot day like this, if that's what you're looking for."
"No, no, these aren't just any penguins," said the human. "The zoo had a mating pair of two males. That's what I'm interested in."
"They're... gay?", she asked, confused. "I thought that was only a human thing - not that there's anything wrong with that. The idea certainly never crossed my mind before I was uplifted. Is that possible?"
"It's more common than you might think. Homosexual behavior is observed in a lot of different species - I don't know if goats are one of them - but it's often assumed that the animals just don't know what they're doing. It's tricky for us humans to tell male and female penguins apart, after all, so maybe the penguins are equally confused. But these two, apparently, never showed any interest in the female penguins they were kept with. They've been mating with each other for years now, and they even adopted an egg and hatched it together.
"But the thing that really surprises me," he continued, excited to talk about a subject he knew well, "is that an experiment like this hasn't been done before. There's plenty of same-sex mating pairs out there - admittedly, most of them aren't particularly monogamous - but I couldn't find a report of one being uplifted. I did a thorough search of the scientific literature - nothing in the Journal of Animalian Studies. There were these whiptail lizards, apparently, that are exclusively female and reproduce asexually. But that's not exactly what I'm interested in researching. I want to know why these penguins didn't choose to mate with the opposite sex when they had the chance... and it seems like no one else has asked that question."
"Why do you think that is?", the Goat Animalian wondered, intrigued.
"I think some people might be afraid of what we'll find," the man answered. "Conservatives want to believe that they don't really love each other, to prove that there's nothing natural about being gay. "And liberals are worried that the songs and children's books they've written about these wholesome gay penguin relationships might turn out to be... misleading."
"What does that make you?"
"A scientist," he said. "I want the truth. The fact that it happens to be both the middle of Pride Month and the week of Father's Day is just a happy accident. And what better way to find out the truth than to ask them myself?"
A moment later, a freshly uplifted Emperor Penguin Animalian walked (and not waddled) into the waiting room, still a little disoriented by his new body and his surroundings. "Ah, Rocky," the human scientist called to him. "Come over here and take a seat. Your mate will be out in a moment." The goat-woman stepped out of the way to let the two have their space, although she was definitely still listening.
The man examined Rocky from head to webbed toe as he sat down, the slick white feathers that still covered the front of his body and the equally smooth black plumage on his head, arms, and back. But what a scientist could observe on the outside was nothing new for Animalia. "So tell me, Rocky," he said, trying to sound more like a friend than an interrogator. "What drew you to another male as your mate, rather than a female?"
"I never really thought too much about it before," Rocky started to answer. The way his facial muscles scrunched up around his beak made it clear he had a lot more to think about now. "When I was just a chick back in Antarctica, I remember there was a female who laid two eggs, but she and her mate could only care for one. And then this pair of two females who were mates, they came in and took care of the extra one until it hatched. That told me it was just part of nature, to mate like that.
"So when I was grown up, and taken to this unfamiliar place with all these other penguins... it never occurred to me to want to mate with them, even when they were showing plenty of interest in me. It just felt right to choose another male. And I never understood until now the things you humans were saying about us the whole time, that my mate and I were 'special' or 'different' or sometimes something much worse. For us, it was totally natural."
The human was busy writing down every word as quickly as he could. He was still catching up to the end of that sentence when the door swung open again, revealing another anthropomorphic penguin who looked quite similar to Rocky. The goat scientist looked back and forth between the mates, impressed that the human knew them well enough to tell that the first one was Rocky the moment he came in.
Both of the penguin men embraced each other warmly. They still weren't quite sure what to do with their new hands, but they could nuzzle their cheeks together the same as they always had. A kiss was out of the question, of course, with their thin beaks that each came to a sharp point. But it wouldn't have occurred to them to try, anyway, having never had human lips in the first place. "I love you," Rocky said to his mate, grateful to have the words for his feelings for the first time.
Meanwhile, the human shifted nervously in his seat, having just remembered the next part of his responsibilities here. "Um, Rocky, Bowie," he said awkwardly, interrupting the display of affection as they turned to look. "There's one more thing I have to tell you two, now that you'll both be capable of understanding it. Now that you're Animalians, you may find yourselves... attracted to females as well as males. It's a side effect of the virus that changed you, essentially - we've seen it in humans who were gay, and I'd guess that the same thing will probably happen to you. But-"
"Oh," Bowie interjected, raising a hand to cut him off, the gesture coming naturally even though he could never have done it before. "I already was interested in both, personally. I remember humans saying they wondered if I was gay or bisexual. Well, now I know what that means, and I can respond. It's just that, the first time I laid eyes on Rocky here... I knew I couldn't ask for a better mate."
Bowie's newly flexible beak curved slightly into a smile, but Rocky looked a little more perturbed. "We won't lose what we have, though, right? I know most of the other penguins never seemed to care about keeping the same mate from one season to the next."
"I don't think you'll have anything to worry about, in that regard," the human assured them. "If you love each other now, I doubt that will change." That had both penguins smiling again. And their smiles grew even wider when they heard the door to the waiting room swing open again.
A young penguin Animalian ran in, appearing to be roughly the equivalent of an eight-year-old girl. From the neck down, her body was still covered in soft, downy gray feathers, only showing the trademark black and white plumage on her head. This was the chick that Rocky and Bowie had hatched from her egg and raised together. The zookeepers had nicknamed her Libby. "Daddy!", she cried out joyfully as she ran to her adopted parents. "Mommy!"
The two adult penguins embraced her, but then looked to one another in confusion. "Which one of us is the mommy?", Bowie wondered, in a voice that was deep and richly masculine.
Libby looked up from the impromptu group hug. "Well, you always fed me from your crop," she explained, gesturing at Rocky, "so you must be the daddy. But..." One look at how her other parent appeared now told her that Bowie was not exactly the mom she was expecting. "I dunno."
"What would you say to having two daddies?", Rocky asked his daughter gently.
She thought about it for only a second. "Okay!", Libby promptly agreed, with the unflappable air of acceptance that only a child could properly have. "Can we do the uplifting thing again? That was fun!"
Rocky and Bowie just laughed. Their lives had just changed quite a lot, but they were still a family, and that bond had only grown stronger.