Baby giraffe stretches his legs at UK zoo
A video shared by the zoo shows the endangered Rothschild's giraffe calf looking around and bounding about in the habitat as he stretches his legs alongside his herd.
The calf was born to mother Orla on March 3 after a 15-month pregnancy, the zoo said in an emailed statement.
According to the zoo the Rothschild's giraffe is one of nine subspecies of giraffe and is highly threatened. In recent decades the population has suffered a 50% decline, the zoo said.
"Once wide-ranging across Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, the Rothschild's giraffe has been almost eliminated from these areas and now only survives in a few small, isolated populations," Mike Jordan, Director of Animals and Plants at the zoo, said.
"Encouragingly, they are starting to recover with the support of conservation programmes such as those supported by Chester Zoo but they're still threatened with habitat loss and an ongoing poaching crisis, which has seen giraffes hunted for their tails to be used as good-luck charms," Jordan added.
