From wiki:
Quote:
Often, the masculine/feminine classification is only followed carefully for human beings. For animals, the relation between real and grammatical gender tends to be more arbitrary. In Spanish, for instance, a cheetah is always un guepardo (masculine) and a zebra is always una cebra (feminine), regardless of their biological sex. If it becomes necessary to specify the sex of the animal, an adjective is added, as in un guepardo hembra (a female cheetah), or una cebra macho (a male zebra). Different names for the male and the female of a species are more frequent for common pets or farm animals, e.g. English cow and bull, Spanish vaca "cow" and toro "bull".
In English, it is common to refer to animals, especially house pets, for which the natural gender is known as "he" and "she", accordingly, and to animals of unknown gender as "it". Individual speakers may refer to animals of unknown sex by a gender, depending on species — for instance, some speakers may tend to refer to dogs as "he" and to cats as "she".
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If a name of an animal applies to the species, it is known as an
epicene name, for example el perro = dog, but la perra specifically for a bitch.
In addition, you have to be a bit careful when using a feminine form to indicate a female of a species. For example, el zorro = the fox, and el lagarto = lizard, but the female forms
zorra and
lagarta (as far as I know) have taken on other meanings (as has
bitch in English).
Other than that, you just have the learn the genders, I'm afraid.