The livestream is still going strong! As the world continues to wait for April the giraffe to give birth, giraffes at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio and the Chester Zoo in England welcomed baby calves this week.
Elli gave birth to daughter Kipenzi at the Toledo Zoo on Monday, April 3. Kipenzi, whose name means “beloved one” in Swahili, weighs 130 pounds and stands at 67 inches, according to the zoo. She belongs to the Masai subspecies of giraffe, which are native to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
While April the giraffe’s livestream from Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York, has gathered millions of viewers across the world, the Toledo Zoo decided not to stream Kipenzi’s birth. “A lot of different things can go wrong in birth,” Shayla Bell Moriarty, the zoo’s director of communications, told the Toledo Blade. “It’s no different than human childbirth.”
Across the pond at the Chester Zoo, Orla also gave birth on Monday to a baby boy. The calf, who has not been named yet, is a rare Rothschild’s giraffe, which is one of the most endangered of the nine subspecies of giraffes.
“Orla went into labor at around noon and, for a little while, we could just see two spindly legs poking out,” the Chester Zoo said in a statement on its website. “She’s an experienced mum and a few hours later she delivered the calf safely onto soft straw as the rest of the herd, including her other young Kidepo and Millie, looked on.”
April, meanwhile, has been showing signs that she’s almost ready to go into active labor, but has yet to do so. The Animal Adventure Park said in a Facebook post on Saturday, April 8, that her calf is “just not coming out,” though April’s appetite has increased, which signals that labor is imminent.
