Special twin Maasai giraffes were born in Kenya’s capital park of Nairobi National Park.
Najib Balala, the Tourism and Wildlife cabinet secretary in Kenya said, the birth of the twin giraffes is a rare event that ought to be secured for posterity.
“One of the Maasai giraffes in Nairobi National Park has given birth to a set of twins. This is an extremely rare occurrence, we welcome the newborn with love,” he said.
The world’s tallest species was listed as “vulnerable to extinction” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) 2016 Red List of threatened wildlife.
Giraffes are extremely endangered species with only about 117,000 giraffes remaining in the world, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. The numbers of the tower-long necked giant in Africa have plummeted by 30 percent over the last 30 years, describing it as a silent extinction.
Kenya is home to three subspecies of giraffe, the Maasai, the reticulated, and the Rothschild.
Nairobi National Park lies just seven kilometers from the heart of the Kenyan capital and is a tourist magnet for its wildlife including lions, leopards, rhinos, and buffalos which graze against a backdrop of distant skyscrapers.
At 15 months, giraffes have one of the longest gestation periods for mammals. They give birth standing up, which means their calves drop just under two meters to the ground.
This startling introduction to life gets them up and running around in less than an hour.
Only a handful of twin calves’ birth has been documented worldwide, with most twins not surviving.
Giraffes have a life span of about 25years when in the wild and in captive (zoos and artificial sanctuaries they can grow to the age of 35 years.
