The Rare White Giraffe
09 Sep 2005
Charles Foley is a researcher for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He has spent the last 12 years following a dream. The researcher has been trying to find a rare white giraffe in Tarangire National Park.
Foley got wind of the rumors in 1993 while in Tanzania. He’s been looking for the giraffe ever since. Even though the stories of sightings stopped in 1994, he has continued to research the possibility that the white giraffe really exists.
Foley has been working on the Tarangire Elephant Project. He monitors the migratory patterns of the elephants. This summer he was back at Tarangire National Park and doing an aerial survey. That’s when he saw it–the white giraffe. He was able to photograph the giraffe and now has his proof of their existence.
The giraffe is mostly white, with brown on the lower half of it’s legs. It has dark spots similar to other giraffs.
Is this the same giraffe Foley heard rumors of in 1993? He doesn’t think so. The original sighting was of an albino giraffe–completely white.
You can see Foley’s photograph on the LiveScience.com website: White Giraffe
[Photograph courtesy of: USAID/Tanzania, www.usaid.gov]
