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Zoo in pachyderm gender shocker

Kaohsiung City's Shoushan Zoo has another surprise for the public: an elephant named Ali, which the public has always been led to believe was a male, is in fact female.

The zoo, which a week ago saw one its crocodiles bite off the forearm of a veterinarian -- the croc was later identified as a salt-water crocodile and not a Nile crocodile as the zoo had previously believed -- admitted the error after a report in yesterday's Chinese-language United Daily News claimed that Ali was a female.

Ali was married to a female elephant named Annie in a wedding ceremony staged by the zoo five years ago.

When quizzed by reporters yesterday, director of Kaohsiung City's Scenic Area Administration Yang Tien-teng (楊添登) and Jason Hung (洪富峰), director of Kaohsiung City's Economic Affairs Bureau, the authorities in charge of the zoo, at first denied the rumor, saying that it was all wrong, only to later change their story and say that, "The zoo has never claimed that Ali was a male elephant."

Chen Po-tsai (陳柏材), a deputy group chief at the zoo, said Ali and Annie came to the zoo in 1979 when they were both five years old, adding that the zoo had always known that the two pachyderms were females: "With the size of an elephant's genitalia, how could we not know?"

Chen added that the zoo's introduction only describes Ali as an African elephant, without specifying the animal's sex.

When asked why Ali had been promoted as being male and why the zoo had arranged the wedding ceremony between Ali and Annie, Chen said that visitors want the zoo to arrange fun and interesting activities.

Ali is now 33 years old and weighs in at five tonnes. Annie passed away three years ago.
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