Verified by 
While she’s tall, slim (except for the baby bump) and possessed of a winsome, if slightly goofy, face, she remains an unlikely media sensation, especially living in a town in upstate New York with some 3700 residents. But she is a star—with appearances on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and hundreds of other newscasts; national and international coverage by newspapers and magazines; and literally millions of fans around the world, many of whom have their eyes glued to the Giraffe cam installed in her pen. It’s coverage a writer can only dream of. What is it about April that has us all hooked?
I should admit from the beginning that I have a dog in this race—or perhaps, more precisely, a giraffe. Yes, I am one of those millions watching. I innocently responded to a friend’s post on Facebook which read simply: “That giraffe.” The person who posted is smart, cultured, and articulate and what she wrote seemed somehow shrouded in mystery. I also noticed that she posted at 3 a.m. California time and this is a working woman. So I responded: “Huh? What giraffe?” This was six weeks ago, a period of my life which I see as Pre-April. A time when I wasn’t handwriting my articles or manuscript so to have access to the cam’s feed on my computer. A time before I knew about ossicones or that giraffes love carrots and romaine lettuce and have long black tongues. Or learned that giraffe pregnancies are engineered to fool waiting predators as well veterinarians since they are vague on timing and overt signs from start to finish. You try giving birth in the wild, standing up, when you’re fifteen feet tall. What are you supposed to do? Hum, “Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run,” channeling Martha and the Vandellas? The due date imprecision—at last count, months— Inevitably led some unkind folk on social media to post, “Pregnant or just fat?” It’s fair to note that there are those who believe the 1969 moon landing was a hoax too.
As with everything, there are the hooked and the not hooked on April. This is true of all social media stars so to be clear: It has nothing to do with her being a giraffe. One friend, a college professor, put her computer on her podium—facing her, not her students—open to the giraffe cam as she lectured on math. She is inured to seeing the actual birth on replay, as I am, since you can’t stay up all night because you have a job and life is short and entails sacrifices. Another friend whom I know to be a bona fide animal lover has demurred. Some of it has to do with her own live cam experiences and her own biases. New York University has, for some years, had a red-tailed hawk nest on a ledge on one of their buildings; the progress is recorded and shared by many thousands. But, as Leslie points out, it’s not actually exciting video. “The ability to see it in real time sounds initially exciting but most of the time, nothing happens. The bird sits on the eggs. And then you see the eggs. After a while, I wondered whether looking at the eggs in my refrigerator from time to time wasn’t more productive.”
Of course, waiting for April’s calf has drama built into it. That was the ironic engine for Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. Let’s look at how the psychology of waiting for April has played out in a somewhat random but based in science way.
- It’s created a sense of community and participation
There are closed groups on Facebook and, before it was shut down, the live chat on the Animal Adventure Park’s site was so active that the posts looked like race cars on a speedway. Studies show that social media can make us feel connected (as well as excluded) and, of course, waiting for a giraffe calf also makes you feel as though you’re somehow a part of something larger going on. There are at least a dozen videos of various and sundry giraffes giving birth on YouTube but that doesn’t seem to have tamped anyone’s enthusiasm. Of course, it’s one thing to see something in re-run; it’s quite another to witness it live. This isn’t a new phenomenon; an estimated 750 million people watched Prince Charles wed Lady Diana in 1981. Humans like being in the know and in on the action.
And then, too, there’s respite for the world-weary in the confines of April’s pen, waiting for an ordinary miracle called birth. That’s at play too, as one woman commented: “If you’d told me two months ago that I’d be watching a giraffe toss hay over her shoulders, I would have told you to get a grip. But it beats watching the news these days. It really does.”
- Her “giraffe-ness”: both exotic and familiar
There are giraffe lovers and aficionados in the world to be sure, although I wasn’t one of them. Like many, I’m drawn more to the cute and the cuddly, which is a part of the complex relationship between the human animal and the larger animal world. Giraffes are stately, elegant, and—by definition—aloft and aloof. It’s no wonder that they symbolize a different perspective, a view of the bigger picture, a being with its hooves on the earth and its head toward the heavens. A bit of research reveals that, historically, giraffes were special diplomatic gifts because of the awe they inspired; seeing one for the first time, it seemed impossible to onlookers that such a fantastical creature even existed. The 15th-century Chinese Emperor Zhu Di was given one which he took as proof that his rule had been ordained. Much more famously, in 1827, Muhammed Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, sent one to the King of France, Charles X. Transporting the animal from Egypt took two years and then, when the boat docked at Marseilles, a processional convoy accompanied the giraffe as she walked to Paris. Yes, walked to Pars. The crowds were enormous and when, forty-one days later she finally arrived, greeted by a doubtless impatient King, a crowd of 600,000 people turned out to see her with their own eyes. She too was a celebrity—a national icon, the inspiration for clothing, knickknacks, a constant source of news for the papers, and, yes, even a hair style that the chic Parisian women adopted. The hair was piled so high on their heads—á la Giraffe—that it was reported they had to sit on the floor of their carriages.
It’s also sadly true that the history of human-giraffe interactions is also full of cruelty and ugliness, the low point of which might have been Julius Caesar’s bringing a giraffe back from Egypt as a pet and then feeding it to the lions in the Coliseum in front of a roaring audience of Romans. Well, we all know how it worked out for Caesar, don’t we?
- Feeling relatedness
Research shows that human connections to their companion animals—mainly dogs and cats but others too—not only have deep historical roots but are complex and sustaining. We are relational beings and our connections to animals—whether they are pets, the bird nesting in the eaves of your porch, or the mallard and female pair who return to the fountain in front of my apartment building each spring—are profound. The Giraffe cam in all of its low-tech glory has us eye-to-eye, face-to-face with April, giving the visitor a view which would be impossible in the real world, short of standing on a very, very tall ladder. Being able to watch her closely---the way her ears twitch, how she soothes her itch by rubbing herself against wood in the barn, the expression on her face as she tosses hay in the air, the way her eyes twinkle when she eats a carrot—appears to give us a glimpse of the creature within. Scientists acknowledge that animals have emotions but, of course, when we watch April, we are “mindreading” an animal without knowing how her mind works. When her keepers say she feels “cranky,” they are reading into the threat of the raised hoof as the vet approaches her. But still, looking, we feel we have a glimpse of her. Yes, it’s anthropomorphism—without an expert in tow, we are stuck interpreting animal behavior as we do human behavior—but, nonetheless, it enlarges our sense of mystery, our connection to her, and animals in general. It makes conservators of us all.
- Experiencing a sense of wonder
We watch as April and her consort, Oliver, bump, nuzzle, and intertwine their necks; they seem to nibble on each other. Are these giraffe kisses perhaps? Watching them reminds us of the extraordinary richness of the planet we’re lucky to be on, as well as underscoring the need to make sure that there are still giraffes in the wild and elsewhere for future generations to admire, enjoy, and ponder. The Giraffe cam may bring April down to earth but, honestly, it does just the opposite for the humans watching.
Photographs copyright and courtesy of Animal Adventure Park 2017
Copyright 2017 Peg Streep
Visit me on Facebook:http://www.Facebook.com/PegStreepAuthor
Mameli, M. and L. Bortolotti, “Animal rights, animal minds, and human mindreading,” Journal of Medical Ethics (2006), 32, 84-89.
Walsh, Froma, “Human Animal Bonds 1: The relational Significance of Companion Animals,” Family Process (2009), vol. 48, no. 4, 462-480.
Allin, Michael, Zarafa: A Giraffe’s Story. New York: Walker Books, 1998.
McCousat, Philip, “The Art of Giraffe Diplomacy,” Journal of Art in Society. www.artinsociety.com
