Giraffe is born - level 3

04-02-2014 07:00

She may look small here, but at less than a week old, this gorgeous baby giraffe is already six foot tall.

The newborn is a rare Rothschild giraffe, and the moment she arrived in the world was caught on camera by keepers at Paignton Zoo in Devon.

Giraffes give birth standing up, so the new arrivals tend to land with a bit of a bump. It might seem like a rude start to life, but the fall helps break the umbilical cord. The video goes on to show the mother then licking the baby clean. This stimulates blood flow and we see as the calf starts breathing on her own.

Just a few hours later, she had found her legs and was running around.

The newborn’s mother, Sangha, came to the UK from Slovakia while her dad, Yoda, came from Denmark.

The Rothschild giraffe is endangered with only a few hundred left in the wild, so every new arrival like this is a cause for celebration.

Difficult words: umbilical cord (long tube of flesh that joins an unborn baby to its mother), calf (baby of a large animal).