Rare Giraffe Born in Connecticut
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LEO Zoological Conservation Center(GREENWICH, Conn.) — A conservation center in Connecticut has sent out a birth announcement like no other.
“It’s a girl,” proclaims the website of the LEO Zoological Conservation Center, announcing the birth of not just any girl but an endangered Rothschild giraffe.
The giraffe, born Friday, was the first giraffe born at the Greenwich conservation center, and possibly the first giraffe ever born in Connecticut, according to the center.
The calf was delivered at 9:04 a.m. Friday by her mother, 6-year-old Petal, who gave birth standing after carrying the newborn for around 15 months.
Just 30 minutes later, the calf was standing and nursing on her own, according to center officials, who watched the delivery.
Now those officials are allowing the public to have a say in the future of the giraffe, which will live at the center with as many as five other giraffes and could grow to as tall as 18 feet.
Giraffe lovers can submit their ideas for what to name the new calf on the center’s website.
The new calf joins a small giraffe subspecies of which only 670 remain in the wild in their native Kenya and Uganda. The giraffes were named and described by Lord Walter Rothschild, a British zoologist, in the early 1900s.
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