When Gen-chan went to a zoo in Japan in 2017, no one wondered whether the then 5-year-old hippo was a boy.
The person in charge of the Mexican zoo where Gen-chan The hippopotamus was initially reported to be a male, and the import documents also showed that information, according to Osaka Tennoji Zoo.
Seven years later, zoo staff made a surprising discovery: Gen-chan, now 12 years old, is female.
“Gen-chan arrived as a male from Mexico's Africam Safari in 2017 and has been raised as a male until now. But as he got older, he did not exhibit typical male behavior and its reproductive organs could not be confirmed with the naked eye,” Osaka Tennoji Zoo wrote in a blog post translated from Japanese on April 18. “There is some doubt as to whether it is really male or not.”
According to Tokyo Weekender, an English-language lifestyle magazine in Japan, zookeepers noticed that Gen-chan did not make any courtship calls to the female hippo and did not spread his feces around to mark their territory like other male hippos.
But the zoo in Osaka, Japan recently confirmed that an outside organization had conducted DNA testing and determined that the hippo was female.
“However, based on these results, we recognize the importance of reconfirming the sex of introduced animals and will take preventative measures to ensure that this does not happen again,” Tennoji Zoo wrote in its blog post last week.
They said they wouldn't change Gen-chan's name. The hippopotamusHis male nickname was chosen through a public contest, Japanese public broadcaster NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reported.
“We will continue to try to provide a comfortable environment for Gen-chan, so we hope that you will continue to come see Gen-chan,” Tennoji Zoo wrote.
The Sapporo Maruyama Zoo in Japan also admitted on March 1 that it had made a similar mistake. People mistakenly thought a 21-month-old lion named Clay was male when he was actually female, Tokyo Weekender reported. The zoo realized its mistake when it noticed that the animal did not grow a mane and did not urinate like other male lions.
Mistaking the gender of animals is not uncommon. In early January, fans were extremely surprised to learn about He Ye, a 4-year-old boy. giant panda in Chengdu, China, is actually a girl, the English-language state-run newspaper China Daily reported. He Ye was known as the twin “brother” of his sister He Hua, also known as Hua Hua, until DNA analysis revealed that He Ye was female. The twins are very famous in China. According to China Daily, He Ye displayed masculine characteristics when she was young but they became less obvious as she grew older. Experts say that among all large mammals, the sex of giant pandas is the most difficult to determine, the Chinese publication reported.
