Saving animal species has become quite critical . However, when you try to mate two members of the same species, one would expect a zoo, of all institutions, to ensure they are “compatible.”
A zoo in Japan has admitted to an embarrassing breeding failure. It tried to mate two hyenas, both of whom were male. If that isn’t humiliating enough, it took the zoo officials over four years to realize their blunder. Following four years of fruitless attempts, the Maruyama Zoo discovered this week that they were not going to get baby spotted hyenas from the “couple” they received in October 2010.
The zoo officials apparently couldn’t ensure that the supposed female of the species was indeed “feminine.” Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo said it had been given the spotted hyenas, Kami and Kamutori, allegedly as a “male and female pair”, as part of an exchange with a South Korean zoo way back in 2010, reported SBS .
After the two animals struggled to reproduce, the zoo conducted a gender test under anesthesia. The results confirmed that Kami, the now five-year-old “female,” was actually a male. Releasing an official statement about the goof-up, the zoo said.
“We had attempted to house them together for breeding many times but they often fought against each other and never engaged themselves in breeding behavior. We have determined that the two animals are both male after conducting ultrasound imaging and hormone tests on them under anesthesia.”
The zoo’s now quite apparent incompetence, knew no bounds, because Kami, the supposedly female hyena, showed no estrus symptoms after reaching sexual maturity, only after which, the zoo decided to put it and its six-year-old partner Kamutori to sex tests, reported The Guardian .
In their defense, the zoo actually said that determining the sex of a hyena can be quite cumbersome. The statement even contained the official ‘clarification’,
“The external genitalia of the male and female are similar, making identification of sex very difficult.”
Despite the utterly humiliating blunder, the zoo officials haven’t given up on expanding the lineage of the spotted hyenas, but only one of the males will eventually “get lucky.” One of the two Hyenas, Kami or Kamutori, will now be chosen for a female partner, clarified the zoo officials,
“We still plan to obtain a female spotted hyena for breeding with either Kami or Kamutori”
The Inquisitr recently reported how a library bungled-up its motto because its employees didn’t re-check the grammar. This incident proves that it is absolutely critical to re-verify facts.
[Image Credit | Sapporo Maruyama Zoo]
