San Diego Zoo Finds Hippo To Be Transgender

Baby Anabelle-Bruce wearing a seaweed skirt made by her female hippo playmates.

SAN DIEGO, California –

After seven weeks of trying to figure out the gender of a newborn hippo, zoo officials have announced that it has determined the hippo to be transgender.

The mother hippo had initially been keeping her baby hidden, as is normal for hippo moms to do, yet the seclusion went on for weeks. It’s been speculated the mother herself may have been confused to what appeared to be a male calf yet was showing clear signs of female behavior.

Baby male hippos often engage in a game zookeepers called “hippo ball” which is essentially the human version of football. While female baby’s will adorn each other with seashell trinkets, seaweed formed skirts, and muck from the ocean floor they use as what we call “eyeliner”.

Baby Anabelle-Bruce, as she is now being named, refrained from hippo-ball and instead quickly became a hit with the other female baby’s, joining in their seashell adornment and eyeliner application parties.

“Obviously this is big, big news. The timing especially, with the recent Bruce Jenner interview where he came out as transgender. We always seem to ignore the animal kingdom when it comes to issues of gay, straight, and trans. The fact is there are indeed gay animals, and now we perhaps have the first ever recognized transgender hippopotamus,” said Toby Dobiasis, an avid zoo patron and animal LGBT activist.

The mother is very accepting of her transgender baby, as was recently evidenced in her having no objections to the seaweed skirt activity that her and the other female babies had been adorning one another in.