Cincinnati Zoo Keeps Making Us Feel Things, Names Baby Penguin ‘Bowie’

The world is still reeling with the news that the iconic and irreplaceable David Bowie has died age 69 after an 18-month long battle with cancer.

Tributes for the singer are absolutely flooding in with a fervour rarely matched, and all over the internet people are sharing the shit out of all things Bowie. (See: that time he ripped Ricky Gervais a new one on ‘Extras‘. Amazing.)

This includes one from Cincinnati Zoo in the US state of Ohio, which is right now making us feel things that are way too real. A Little penguin – the world’s smallest breed – was born at the zoo on Bowie’s 69th and final birthday, January 7, 2016. So they named it after him.

Bowie the penguin was actually named a few days before the singer’s death, with Zoo staff saying they picked the name following suggestions from Facebook.

“Meet Bowie, the first Zoo Baby of 2016!” they wrote. “Elvis and Bowie were popular suggestions because today is the birth day of both Elvis Presley and David Bowie. The penguin keepers chose Bowie because we already have a king penguin named Elvis.”

He / she / it remains genderless for the time being, because – in a fitting twist for an animal whose namesake pioneered androgynous style – zoo staff don’t yet know Bowie’s sex, and won’t until they complete a chromosome test.