On Sunday, the zoo announced a contest to name the newborn, which visitors can now view at the zoo.
In an email to CBS News, zoo director David Bright said the last known case of a single-colored giraffe was in 1972 in Tokyo. According to archive photos, a giraffe named Toshiko was born at the Ueno Zoo.
Reticulated giraffes are a species of giraffe with brown and orange spots. According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, they are native to Africa and were listed as endangered in 2018.
“International coverage of the birth of an unusual, single-colored baby in reticulated giraffes has brought much-needed attention to the animals’ conservation issues,” said Tony Bright, founder of Brights Zoo. “Wild populations are going extinct.” slowly: 40% of the wild giraffe population has disappeared in the last three decades.”
On Monday, the zoo said it had selected four possible names to vote on for the newborn: Kipiki, which means “unique”; Firiali – “unusual” or “extraordinary”; Shakiri, which means “she is the most beautiful”; and Jamella – “one of the great beauties”.
The publication also talked about the rarest case of the appearance of white giraffes in the wild. In 2020, a family of three albino giraffes was sighted in Kenya. They were completely white due to leucism, a mutation that causes loss of pigmentation in the animal’s skin.
Poachers killed two giraffes, after which the conservation group fitted the remaining giraffe with a GPS monitor to track its movements and protect it from poachers.
