Osaka Tennoji ZooBy Vicky WongBBC NewsA zoo in Japan has confirmed that a hippopotamus thought for seven years to be a he is, in fact, a she.A DNA test was carried out after zookeepers noticed that 12-year-old Gen-chan did not display typical male hippo behaviour.Gen-chan arrived in Osaka from Mexico in 2017, and customs documents at the time said she was male.”We will keep doing our best to provide comfortable environment to Gen-chan,” the zoo said.The Osaka Tennoji Zoo confirmed the news about Gen-chan’s actual sex in a post published on their website last week.The post said Gen-chan first arrived at their zoo from the Africam Safari animal park in Mexico when she was five years old, and was declared as a male.The statement said that because Gen-chan was still a calf at the time, they did not question the documents.But zookeepers got suspicious as Gen-chan got older and they could not visually identify male reproductive organs.A spokeswoman for the Osaka Tennoji Zoo told AFP on Tuesday that typical male hippo behaviour that Gen-chan was not displaying included making courtship calls to female hippos, or scattering faeces around while defecating with a propeller-like tail motion in order to mark territory.According to the Mainichi newspaper, the zoo’s vice director Kiyoshi Yasufuku said: “We recognise the importance of confirming the sex, and we want to ensure that such mistakes will not happen again.” The zoo confirmed that Gen-chan will not be getting a name change.Related TopicsAsiaZoos and ZoologyJapanAnimals …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnOsaka Tennoji ZooBy Vicky WongBBC NewsA zoo in Japan has confirmed that a hippopotamus thought for seven years to be a he is, in fact, a she.A DNA test was carried out after zookeepers noticed that 12-year-old Gen-chan did not display typical male hippo behaviour.Gen-chan arrived in Osaka from Mexico in 2017, and customs documents at the time said she was male.”We will keep doing our best to provide comfortable environment to Gen-chan,” the zoo said.The Osaka Tennoji Zoo confirmed the news about Gen-chan’s actual sex in a post published on their website last week.The post said Gen-chan first arrived at their zoo from the Africam Safari animal park in Mexico when she was five years old, and was declared as a male.The statement said that because Gen-chan was still a calf at the time, they did not question the documents.But zookeepers got suspicious as Gen-chan got older and they could not visually identify male reproductive organs.A spokeswoman for the Osaka Tennoji Zoo told AFP on Tuesday that typical male hippo behaviour that Gen-chan was not displaying included making courtship calls to female hippos, or scattering faeces around while defecating with a propeller-like tail motion in order to mark territory.According to the Mainichi newspaper, the zoo’s vice director Kiyoshi Yasufuku said: “We recognise the importance of confirming the sex, and we want to ensure that such mistakes will not happen again.” The zoo confirmed that Gen-chan will not be getting a name change.Related TopicsAsiaZoos and ZoologyJapanAnimals …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
