Like millions of others across the world, I can’t stay away from it.
I’m talking about the live cam that is following a giraffe who is currently residing at the Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, N.Y. I heard about it on Facebook so after the third or fourth friend posted the link, I clicked on it to see what was going on.
April the Giraffe is expecting a calf and a camera has been set up in her pen to provide access and education to the public. Her mate and the expectant father, Oliver, resides in the pen next door. Through the wonders of the internet, the world can tune in to see if the blessed event has taken place yet.
At the time of this writing, April and Oliver – and millions of humans via the internet – are still waiting.
April, her pregnancy and the confusion and controversy around the birth have again convinced me that human beings are strange creatures.
There has been a lot of silliness about April the Giraffe.
Based on the estimated time of conception, the zoo predicted the baby would be born in January or February. They posted the camera last month and people started tuning in and sharing the website with friends. Soon millions of people a day were checking in to see how she is doing.
As one might expect, some complaints have come in about the video. Apparently, some people flagged the video as “sexually graphic” and for a short time last month, the giraffe cam was shut down. Thankfully, it was back up in about an hour. I don’t think a giraffe standing, eating, laying down and occasionally bumping the camera with her nose seems all that sexually explicit.
On one site where it’s being streamed, people can post comments. The comments are coming in from all over the world and some are pretty darn funny. People are impatient with April, empathetic about her plight, grossly uninformed about animal gestation and, sometimes, quite witty. Some people are commenting so regularly that they are now having conversations on the site that have nothing to do with April, the baby or anything else to do with the giraffes. In other words, people are making friends (and enemies) through the giraffe-cam.
Reading some of the questions, it raises the question of who really are the “animals” on this planet.
Occasionally, one of April’s caretakers appears on the cam. April seems fairly trusting of them and it is apparent that they genuinely care about her. According to the posted video, the response via phone, in person and through email and other social media has been so overwhelming that the zookeepers and administrators at Animal Adventure Park had to come out with a video update to answer all of the questions and to dispel the rumors. They have also asked people to stop calling and emailing them.
Yes, she does have water but it is out of the range of the camera. The dark stuff on the floor of the pen is not poop, it is her hay. April apparently likes to toss it around. There is another food area out of the camera lens. She will lay down when she wants to. The zookeepers explained that they won’t make her because she “looks tired.” She’s not agitated; giraffes apparently have short attention spans so they move around a lot.
According to the zookeepers at Animal Adventure Park, due dates for giraffes are apparently like due dates for humans. Sometimes those due dates are off. The vets are closely monitoring April, an experienced mom, and know what to look for and the signs of a pending delivery.
All the while, we keep watching. The owners of Animal Adventure Park, a 200-acre zoo experience, are admittedly pretty happy with the attention their zoo and their little town is getting from the giraffe-cam. Donations have started coming in and a GoFundMe page has been set up for the program. They are anticipating increased numbers of guests this summer as people come in to see the newborn. Eventually, when he or she weans from mom the plans are to send the toddler giraffe to another zoo.
While most of us hate to think of animals in captivity, the experts in the field have told us that there are many benefits in education, advocacy and conservation of having a place where we can learn and see these and other amazing creatures.
The internet has provided us with so many things. Some of those are not so great. Others are amazing. The incredible response to the visuals provided by a camera near a bald eagle’s nest or in a mama giraffe’s pen where we can learn and watch would cause such a stir is pretty incredible.
You can check out the live stream of April right here:
