Study Resource: Gender of nouns referring to animals

In many cases, nouns for animals in Brazilian Portuguese follow general rule for the gender of nouns for living beings:

• The word for a male animal is grammatically masculine and ends in -o

• The word for a female animal is grammatically feminine and ends in -a

Here’s an example:

Here are more examples that work like this:

However, there are also some special cases. Let’s check them!

• Some nouns for animals use different stems for the males vs. females:

  Masculine	Feminine
  boi Translation: ox	vaca Translation: cow
  cavalo Translation: horse	égua Translation: mare
  galo Translation: rooster	galinha Translation: hen
  tigre Translation: tiger	tigresa Translation: tigress

• Some nouns only have a grammatically masculine form, that is used for both males and females.

  Grammatically Masculine
  canguru Translation: kangaroo
  esquilo Translation: squirrel
  golfinho Translation: dolphin
  morcego Translation: bat
  pássaro Translation: bird
  tubarão Translation: shark

• Some nouns only have a grammatically feminine form, that is used for both males and females.

  Grammatically Feminine
  abelha Translation: bee
  baleia Translation: whale
  foca Translation: seal
  girafa Translation: giraffe
  tartaruga Translation: turtle
  zebra Translation: zebra

But if the noun for an animal is always grammatically masculine or always grammatically feminine, how do you make the distinction between male and female animals? In this case, it’s just like English! Add the words macho (meaning male) or fêmea (meaning female), like this:

Notice that, In the examples above, the article stays the same as the gender of the noun, not the gender of the animal, because the article agrees with the grammatical gender of the noun.