Hippo came to Osaka in 2017 from Mexico. — AFPAuthorities have been deceived for seven years by a wild animal in Japan as they did not expect it to be the way it is.A large hippopotamus that was thought to be a male for seven years turned out to be a female. After the zookeeper noticed that the African native was not showing typical male behavior, they conducted a DNA test in which it was revealed that the 12-year-old was a female. The hippo — named Gen-chan — came to Osaka in 2017 from Mexico. At that time, the documents showed termed it a male.”We will keep doing our best to provide a comfortable environment to Gen-chan,” Osaka Tennoji Zoo said.The news was released last week on the zoo website in Japanese, about Gen-chan’s sex.According to the translated post, Gen-chan first arrived at their zoo from the African Safari animal park in Mexico when she was five years old, and was declared as a male.It further added: “Because Gen-chan was still a calf at the time, they did not question the documents.”As the mammal grew older, the zookeepers became suspicious about its behavior with no visibility of the male reproductive organ.A spokeswoman for the Osaka Tennoji Zoo told AFP 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.The zoo’s vice director Kiyoshi Yasufuku was quoted by the Mainichi newspaper: “We recognise the importance of confirming the sex, and we want to ensure that such mistakes will not happen again.”



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