Fota Wildlife Park has announced the birth of a critically endangered female Nubian giraffe calf, born to mother Aoife and father Ferdie.<\/p>\n
The calf, standing approximately six feet tall at birth, was born on Monday, June 15, just days before International Giraffe Day on June 21.<\/p>\n
The new arrival is Aoife\u2019s second calf, following the birth of Clodagh in 2014. Aoife herself was born at Fota Wildlife Park in 2010, as was her mother, R\u00f3is\u00edn.<\/p>\n
The calf\u2019s father, Ferdie, was born at Royal Burgers\u2019 Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 2009, and was transferred to Fota Wildlife Park in 2012 as part of a European ex-situ endangered breeding programme (EEP).<\/p>\n
Lead Ranger, Aidan Rafferty, said: \u201cThe gestation period for giraffes is nearly 15 months, so the team has been eagerly anticipating this arrival for well over a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cBreeding programmes are often complex and unpredictable, and no birth is ever taken for granted. Aoife was incredible throughout. The calf made the typical six-foot drop, landed safely, and was standing on all four feet within the first half hour. Watching those first moments is an incredibly moving experience and a hugely rewarding one for the entire team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fota Wildlife Park is inviting visitors to suggest an Irish name for the new female calf.<\/p>\n
Entries can be submitted at a collection point in the Serengeti Shop until July 30, and one lucky winner will receive an annual pass to the park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fota Wildlife Park has announced the birth of a critically endangered female Nubian giraffe calf, born to mother…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[4257,79,61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-528145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-cork-business","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}