Under the watchful eye of h is mother Orla, the baby giraffe Narus took her first wobbly steps within an hour of being born.
Narus is the second calf to be born into Chester zoo’s herd of 11 endangered Rothschild’s giraffes in the past five months.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has listed all giraffe species as vulnerable to extinction in the wild. Rothschild’s giraffes are one of the most threatened . It is estimated that only 1,600 remain as a result of poaching and habitat loss across Africa .
Zookeepers named the new arrival Narus after a valley in Uganda’s Kidepo national park, where the zoo’s conservationists are working to protect one of the last wild populations of the rare species.
Tim Rowlands, the curator of mammals at the zoo, said: “Giraffe calves get to their feet within minutes of birth, but those long legs can still take a bit of getting used to. He has settled in really well and after his little adventure outside he seems to have come on leaps and bounds.
“Narus was only born last week and already more than 20 million people have watched the footage of his birth online, so it’s great that he has been able to raise such huge awareness of his species – which is experiencing a silent extinction in the wild.”
Orla, who is eight years old, has previously given birth to two others calves, Millie and Kidepo.
Rothschild’s giraffes are named after the zoologist Lord Walter Rothschild, who founde d the National History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire. The species is identified by its broader dividing white lines and has no spots beneath the knees.
Once wide-ranging across Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, the species has been all but eliminated from much of its former range and now survives only in a few small, isolated populations in Kenya and Uganda.
Roughly a third of the surviving population of Rothschild’s giraffes now live in zoos, where carefully coordinated breeding programmes are creating a safety-net population .
The main threat to the species is habitat loss and poaching for meat and hides. Giraffes were hunted in the past for their tails, which were used as good-luck charms, sewing thread and even fly swats.
