A Conservation group in Kenya has captured two extremely rare white giraffes on video.
Spotting a white giraffe is unusual, and instances have only been documented a few times in the past twenty years.
The Hirola Conservation Program posted the video of the giraffes, an adult female, and calf on YouTube. See below.
Hirola Conservation wrote about the August encounter on their blog.
Early June this year, reports of a white baby giraffe and its mother were reported to us by the Rangers who got the report from one of the villagers adjacent to the Ishaqbini Conservancy. We hurriedly headed to the scene as soon as we got the news…
The mother kept pacing back and forth a few yards in front of us while signaling the baby Giraffe to hide behind the bushes – a characteristic of most wildlife mothers in the wild to prevent the predation of their young.
Why are they white?
The cause of the white color of the giraffes is known as “leucism” Leucism is a partial loss of pigmentation.
The giraffes are not albino. Albinism is a condition in which there is an absence of melanin, which gives color to the skin hair and eyes.
One way to tell the difference is to look at the eyes. With leucism, the eyes are not affected.
When else have white giraffes been spotted?
In 2005 researcher Charles Foley finally located one after a 12-year search in Africa. Foley had a distant photo to prove it.
There have been just a couple other sightings, and those both happened during the past 18 months.
In January 2016 a white giraffe was spotted in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. This instance was well documented by media around the world.
There was also another sighting in March of 2016 in the Ishaqbini Conservancy in Kenya.
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