Meet Mmamoriri The Transgender Lioness

Phaylen Fairchild
3 min readJul 17, 2019

You’ve heard of gay penguins, but species throughout the world also count transgender members among them.

Meet Mmamoriri, the Lioness from the Okavango Delta in Botswana where she is at least one of 5 trans lionesses in the Delta who have elected to adopt the physical characteristics and mannerisms of the opposite gender.

At first, on observation, researchers thought Mmamoriri was a traditional male Lion. She has a beautiful full mane, a deeper, more masculine roar than her female counterparts and her behavior within the pride is undeniably a role exhibited traditionally by males, both dominance, leadership and protection.

Mmamoriri and a Male from her Pride.

Transgender Lions, both MtF and FtM have been witnessed in the wild across the Savannah

We often discuss homosexuality occurring in nature, but rarely do we take a look at the many species who embrace the transgender among them.

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