If you think that masculine nouns in Spanish are always used with referring to males and feminine nouns when referring to females, your assumption would be wrong — especially when talking about animals.
Like most nouns, the names for nearly all animals are either masculine or feminine. For example, the word for giraffe, jirafa is feminine, and it can be used when referring to any giraffe, whether male or female. Similarly, rinoceronte is masculine, and it can be used to refer to rhinoceroses of either sex.
The same is done with people. El humano (human) is masculine even when referring to a woman or girl, and la persona (person) is feminine even when referring to a man or boy.
Animals With Sex-Differentiated Names
Some animals have different names for each sex. For example, a perro is a male dog, and a perra is a female dog or bitch. The names don't have to be so similar: a cow is una vaca, while a bull is un toro, even though they refer to the same species of animal. As in these examples, it is common, although not universal, for animals with sex-differentiated names in Spanish to have differentiated names in English as well.
Some other animals with different names for the sexes are:
- el lagarto (male lizard), la lagarta (female lizard)
- el elefante (male elephant), la elefanta (female elephant)
- el caballo (stallion), la yegua (mare)
- el carnero (ram), la oveja (sheep)
- el gallo (rooster), la gallina (hen)
- el macho (billy goat), la cabra (nanny goat)
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Generally, the masculine form can be thought of as the default name for the type of species. Thus if you don't know whether a cat is male or female, it's fine to refer to it as un gato. But a cat known to be female can be referred to as una gata.
Groups of Animals
In the case of animals whose names vary with the sex, if you have a group of animals, some female and some male, they should be referred to by the masculine plural: thus los gatos or los perros. But if the name of the animal is invariably feminine, the feminine must still be used: las jirafas (even for a group of males) or las arañas (spiders). In a very few cases where each sex has a different name — they include vaca, cabra, and oveja — the feminine form can be pluralized to represent a group. (The same can be true in English, as cattle might informally be referred to as cows even if bulls are part of the mix.)
Macho/Hembra
If you need to indicate the sex of an animal with a undifferentiated name, you can add the word macho for male or hembra for female:
- la jirafa hembra, the female giraffe
- la jirafa macho, the male giraffe
- el dinosaurio macho, the male dinosaur
- el dinosaurio hembra, the female dinosaur
Note that macho and hembra, however, are traditionally considered to be either nouns or invariable adjectives. Thus they do not vary in form with gender or number:
- las jirafas hembra, the female giraffes
- las jirafas macho, the male giraffes
Although treating macho and hembra as invariable adjectives is the grammatically safe thing to do, in real life speakers often make them plural. You should stick to the traditional form in formal writing, however.
Personal Names
When referring to animals with personal names (such as pets), you should use adjectives whose gender matches the given name of the animal when using that name as the subject of a sentence:
- Pablo, la jirafa más alta del zoo, está enfermo. (Pablo, the zoo's tallest giraffe, is sick.)
- Su hámster negro se llama Elena. Elena es muy guapa. (His black hamster is named Elena. Elena is very pretty. Note the change in grammar depending on whether the category name or given name is the grammatical subject.)
Key Takeaways
- The category or species names for most animals are either masculine or feminine, and the gender for the animal name is used whether a specific animal in male or female.
- Some animals have separate names for each sex, such as a cow being una vaca and a bull being un toro.
- When the subject of a sentence is the personal name of an animal, such a pet, the accompanying adjectives should match the animal's sex rather than that of its species name.
