A baby giraffe without spots was born in an American zoo
A new superstar has appeared in one of the zoos in Tennessee, USA. It doesn't have a name yet, but it has already made a splash among its herd – a giraffe without spots.
This almost two-meter miracle was born on July 31 at the Bright Zoo, a private institution in Limestone, and this month the baby made her public debut. The calf is a reticulated giraffe, one of the subspecies of giraffes, CNN reported on Tuesday.
The zoo stated that she may be "the only reticulated giraffe of solid color living anywhere on the planet" (the last such giraffe in captivity was probably a calf born in Tokyo's Ueno Zoo in 1972).
The word "reticulated" refers to a network of polygonal brown spots of a giraffe, separated by streaks of creamy-white color. The spots serve primarily as camouflage in the savannahs of northern Kenya, where they live and graze.
According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining and growing wild giraffe populations across Africa, there is a complex system of blood vessels under each spot. To keep the tallest land mammal in the world on its hooves, you need an extensive network of vessels and a 12-kilogram heart.
According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, there are about 16,000 reticulated giraffes left in the wild, which is 50% less than three and a half decades ago.
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