Zoom photo of ‘Genchan’, a female hippopotamus at Tennoji Osaka Zoo. [사진=텐노지 동물원 SNS]
It has become a hot topic as it was revealed of late that a hippopotamus that lived as ‘male’ for 7 years was actually ‘female’.
Recently, foreign media such as Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun and Britain’s BBC reported that ‘Genchan’, a hippopotamus at Tennoji Zoo in Osaka, Japan, has been identified as female instead of male for the first time in seven years.
Genchan was moved from a wildlife park in Mexico to Tennoji Zoo in Osaka in 2017 at the age of 5. At the time, Genchan was classified as male.
The zoo named the hippopotamus Genchan after seeing him move around so energetically. In Japan, the kanji ‘健’ (gen), meaning healthy, is often used as a male name.
However, as Genchan grew, the zookeepers began to question Genchan’s gender. This is because Gen-chan could not see the male genitalia.
Furthermore, Genchan did not exhibit any of the typical behaviors of male hippos, such as making courtship sounds towards female hippos, waving her tail like a propeller, or sprinkling feces.
Accordingly, the zoo carried out a genetic test on Genchan, and the results revealed that he was a ‘female’ hippopotamus, not a ‘male’ hippopotamus.
The zoo said, “Although the gender has changed, we hope that many people will come to see him because ‘Gen-chan is Gen-chan.’ We raised her as a male, but she is only a girl. We will not change the name.”
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