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This week let's learn about some astonishing giraffes and zebras that don't look like you'd expect!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nSee the Rare, Spotless Giraffe Born at a Tennessee Zoo\n\nGiraffe Conservation Foundation\n\nBrights Zoo\n\nA tale of two zebras: South African photos used in misleading posts about Kenya's polka-dot foal\n\nZebra News: Spotted Tira, Zonkeys and Zorses\n\nFurther viewing:\n\nThe Mysterious Return of Tira the Spotted Dark Zebra in Masai Mara\n\nKipekee the spotless giraffe [pic is from the first link posted above]:\n\n\n\nThe picture posted on Facebook by Giraffe Conservation Foundation on Sept. 10, 2023:\n\n\n\nTira the spotted zebra as a baby in 2019:\n\n\n\nTira the spotted zebra is getting so grown up (or was in 2021)!\n\n\n\nA DIFFERENT spotted zebra from South Africa:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nI\u2019m back from Dragon Con, where I had a great time as usual! I was careful and wore a mask while I was around other people, but masking works best when everyone wears a mask, which as we all know doesn\u2019t happen very often right now. Luckily I didn\u2019t get covid, but I did come down with an ordinary cold. I\u2019m just about over it now, though, so hopefully I don\u2019t sound too bad.\n\nI live in Tennessee, and before I left for Dragon Con I kept seeing news reports about an unusual baby giraffe born in a Tennessee zoo. You may have heard about the giraffe calf too. As you probably know, giraffes have an elaborate pattern of markings called spots, although they\u2019re not spots like a leopard\u2019s spots. They look a lot like the cracks in a dried-up mudpuddle, where the muddy parts are dark brown or orangey-brown, and the cracks in between are tan or white. It\u2019s sometimes called a web pattern, where the lighter design looks like a web overlaid on a darker coat.\n\nWhatever you call it, all giraffes have these markings. But on July 31, 2023, a calf was born that didn\u2019t have any spots at all. She\u2019s completely brown. Also, very beautiful and cute as a little button.\n\nThe calf was born at Brights Zoo, which is near a community called Limestone in Tennessee. I\u2019d never heard of the zoo, so I assumed it was in middle or west Tennessee, and I live in east Tennessee. But when I looked it up, it\u2019s actually quite close to me. I will definitely be visiting as soon as I get a chance! (Its website says Google Maps has its address wrong, by the way, in case you plan to visit it too.) It\u2019s a private zoo dedicated to education and conservation, and among the animals they care for are giraffes.\n\nThe calf in question is an endangered reticulated giraffe. Conservationists estimate that fewer than 9,000 reticulated giraffes remain in the wild these days, but it does well in captivity and is a popular animal in zoos. The reticulated giraffe was once common throughout northeast Africa, although its range is fractured into little areas now. It\u2019s happy in a number of habitats, including rainforests and savannas.\n\nThe zoo came up with four name choices for their calf and invited people to vote for which name they liked best. The winning name was announced just a few days ago as this episode goes live, Kipekee. It means \u201cunique\u201d in Swahili, the official language of Kenya.\n\nKipekee is healthy and active, and the zoo reports she was immediately accepted by her mother and all the other giraffes as just a regular baby. I guess giraffes understand that what you look like isn\u2019t nearly as important as how you act, and Kipekee acts like a curious little baby giraffe.\n\nIn a lot of news reports, you\u2019ll hear that Kipekee is the only unspotted giraffe seen since 1972, when one was born in a zoo in Japan, and that she\u2019s likely the only unspotted giraffe alive in the entire world right now. But then, only a matter of hours before this episode goes live, because I took forever to start working on it, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation dropped a post on their Facebook page.