Poachers illegally hunt or capture wildlife animals. As a result of poaching, biodiversity has been affected and ecosystems have been disturbed. Poachers love killing elephants so they can steal their ivories. However, they also kill other animals such as rhinos, lions, wild dogs, etc.
Recently, rangers found the skeletal remains of two white giraffes in a nature conservancy in Kenya. The giraffes, a mother and her 7-month-old baby, went missing a few months ago. They’ve been living in Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy for four months.
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Mohammed Ahmednoor, manager of the conservancy, released a statement in which he said that it’s a very sad day for Kenya. The country is the only country that is home to white giraffes.
According to the rangers, all the signs indicate that the giraffes were killed by poachers. The poachers haven’t been identified yet and their motives remain unknown. The Kenya Wildlife Service already launched an investigation in order to find out who is behind this horrible act.
According to the conservancy, there is only one white giraffe left now – the son of the killed adult female. Sadly, he may be the last white giraffe on the Earth.
Although people may think that white giraffes are albino, they aren’t. In fact, the white giraffes suffer from a condition called leucism, which is the main cause to lose skin pigmentation. While animals with albinism don’t have any dark pigments, animals with leucism still produce dark pigment in their soft tissue cells. This is the reason why some white giraffes have dark eyes and dark tail hair.
Leucism is extremely rare in giraffes. Outside of this Kenyan giraffe family, there was only one other white giraffe in Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park in Africa.
Unfortunately, giraffes in Kenya are on the endangered species list. There were approximately 36,000 giraffes in the wild 30 years ago. However, that number has been halved since that. There are around 15,780 giraffes in the wild nowadays.
