BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) \u2014 Zoo Boise is once again inviting people to climb up onto a platform to feed their two giraffes, Jabari (16 years old) and Tafari (10 years old), leaves of romaine lettuce. <\/p>\n
“Our giraffe encounter is very popular amongst our visitors and our giraffes,” said Melissa Wade, Zoo Boise’s general curator. “We’re not exploiting these guys, trust me, they love it.”<\/p>\n
Wade said the giraffes enjoy interacting with people, and of course, the opportunity to snack on some extra greens. <\/p>\n
“We never force them to come over. The way we designed our exhibit, the giraffes have a choice to take part in the feeding. If they want to walk away, it’s totally up to them.”<\/p>\n
And during the two-hour encounter period, doubling the timeframe of previous years, the giraffes do occasionally wander off and ignore offerings. However, the people holding these leaves still enjoy the experience of getting so “close and personal” to the gentle giants.<\/p>\n
Wade said her favorite part of working with giraffes is the challenge they pose. “They require a lot of patience. There’s only so much you can do to convince an 18-foot animal to do anything. Developing a good relationship and building a lot of trust is really important with giraffes. They’re prey animals, so they don’t trust easily.”<\/p>\n
The encounter costs $5, but only if a giraffe eats the offered lettuce. If not, it’s free.<\/p>\n
All proceeds from the Perkins Coie Giraffe Encounter support wildlife conservation efforts worldwide, outside of the zoo. <\/p>\n
“You’re not just feeding a giraffe, you’re helping to save the giraffes in the wild,” Wade said. “Through efforts like this one, our community has raised four million dollars for wildlife conservation; we should be proud of that. For the size of our establishment and the size of our community, it really sets us apart.”<\/p>\n
The encounter is s set up for visitors Tuesday – Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., weather permitting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) \u2014 Zoo Boise is once again inviting people to climb up onto a platform to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-579042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}