According to the Osaka Tennoji Zoo, the animal does not exhibit “typical male behavior”. — © AFP
After seven years, a zoo in Japan has discovered that one of the park’s male hippos, Gen-chan, is actually a female. The Osaka Tennoji Zoo said on its website that the animal did not exhibit “typical male behavior” and that no genitals were visible. A DNA test revealed that Gen-chan was indeed female.
Gen-chan came to Japan from the African Safari zoo in Mexico in 2017. Her official documents stated that it would be a five-year-old male. Because Gen-chan was still a calf at the time, the caretakers did not initially doubt the gender. But in the years that followed, Gen-chan showed no masculine behavior, according to the caretakers. They also could not discover any visible male genitals on the animal.
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A spokesperson for Osaka Tennoji Zoo told AFP news agency that Gen-chan was not trying to mate with female hippos. She also didn’t throw her feces while waving her tail around. According to the spokesperson, this is typical male territorial behavior.
“We do our best to make Gen-chan’s stay as pleasant as possible,” the zoo writes on the site. The name of the animal will not change.
