baby giraffe toronto zoo

Toronto Zoo just welcomed a baby giraffe and it's too adorable to even process

The Toronto Zoo got an unbelievably adorable addition on Thursday morning when Masai giraffe Mstari and her mate Kiko welcomed their second calf into the world, the zoo sharing photos and videos of the baby's first moments that are bordering on cute overload.

The calf was born Thursday at 9 a.m., with both Mstari and the yet-to-be-named baby both reportedly doing well. A tweet shared by the zoo early Friday morning was the first glimpse the public got of the new knobby-kneed addition, an endangered species native to sub-Saharan Africa.

Conceived at the beginning of November 2020, Mstari's 15-month-pregnancy (Masai giraffes have a gestation period ranging from 13 to 16 months) was worth the wait, giving people doom scrolling Twitter on Friday a much-needed reason to smile.

Within just an hour of being born, the calf (whose gender has yet to be determined) was already walking on its own, as mother Mstari groomed and doted on the newborn.

It's not Mstari's first adorable little giraffe baby, the gentle giant giving birth to her first calf in May 2020, and melting our collective hearts at a time when the city needed a positive headline. And it seems Mstari has our back yet again, delivering her second calf, and with it, a happy reprieve from the flood of heartbreaking social media posts emerging out of Ukraine.

Many people are welcoming this eye bleaching post on Twitter, with one saying "Sorry to interrupt your doom scroll but a new baby 🦒has arrived in Toronto!," and another commenting, "So much horrific news in the world, so here's a baby giraffe."

Like the new calf's older sibling, who was initially known as Baby Long Legs before a naming contest settled on Amani, which means "peace" in Swahili, the new baby is being tentatively referred to as Little Long Legs before a more appropriate name is selected.

Even with this cute new addition, Masai giraffes are still an endangered species, with fewer than 35,000 left in the wild after suffering a population decline of over 50 per cent in the last three decades.

Lead photo by

Toronto Zoo


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