Gender contrasts on human versus sentient referents In the case of languages which have masculine and feminine genders, the relation between biological sex and grammatical gender tends to be less exact in the case of animals than in the case of people. In Spanish, for instance, a cheetah is always (masculine) and a zebra is always (feminine), regardless of their biological sex. In Russian a rat and a butterfly are always () and () (feminine). In French, a giraffe is always , whereas an elephant is always . To specify the sex of an animal, an adjective may be added, as in ("a female cheetah"), or ("a male zebra"). Different names for the male and the female of a species are more frequent for common pets or farm animals, English cow and bull, Spanish "cow" and "bull", Russian ' () "ram" and ' () "ewe".
Gender contrasts on human versus sentient referents In the case of languages which have masculine and feminine genders the relation between biological sex and grammatical gender tends to be less exact in the case of animals than in the case of people In Spanish for instance a cheetah is always (masculine) and a zebra is always (feminine) regardless of their biological sex In Russian a rat and a butterfly are always () and () (feminine) In French a giraffe is always  whereas an elephant is always  To specify the sex of an animal an adjective may be added as in ("a female cheetah") or ("a male zebra") Different names for the male and the female of a species are more frequent for common pets or farm animals English cow and bull Spanish "cow" and "bull" Russian ' () "ram" and ' () "ewe"