YouTube livestream of pregnant giraffe briefly pulled for nudity and sexually explicit content
A livestream of a pregnant giraffe waiting to give birth has struck controversy online after alleged animal rights activists successfully had the stream removed.
"This is the perfect example of why we can't have nice things," said Jordan Patch, owner Animal Adventure Park in New York. After the stream was taken down, Patch was visibly shook and vented his frustrations in a Facebook Live Thursday morning.
SEE ALSO: The world's fastest land animal is even more threatened than we thought
Patch claims that the livestream of its pregnant giraffe April, received 20 to 30 million views in just twelve hours. But with this masses came problems. While the zoo sees the video as education, Patch says that some "extremists and animal right activists" reported the livestream as containing sexually explicit or nude content, which triggered YouTube to pull the video.
"What a shame. Some people are ridiculous!," one person commented on the Facebook Live. "This video is beautiful and educational!"
The livestream has since been reinstated.
YouTube responded to a request for comment with a link to its community guidelines. According to the company, YouTube reviews videos that the community believes violates the guidelines, but admits that sometimes they do make mistakes. Additionally, YouTube noted they do have an appeals process for videos which may have been improperly removed. With 400 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, it's bound to make some mistakes.
Patch used the Facebook Live to encourage animal rights activists to support conservation.
"Instead of sitting behind a keyboard or holding up protest sign, get behind conservation," said Patch. "We're all on the same team. We want the best for these animals, and we would love to have them in their natural environment one day. But until we can control the destruction of natural habitat and poaching, that is not going to happen."
As for April the pregnant giraffe that's about to give birth, Patch says she is progressing well and is expected to give birth soon, though he admits there is no way to predict when this will happen.
