Largest giraffe research project

The biggest giraffe research project ever undertaken is an ongoing one entitled Project GIRAFFE (in which GIRAFFE is an acronym, standing for GIRAffe Facing Fragmentation Effects). It is being conducted by the Wild Nature Institute and is focusing upon the possible effects of environmental fragmentation upon the Masai giraffes Giraffa tippelskirchi inhabiting Tanzania's Tarangire National Park. To do this effectively, the Project has to monitor every single giraffe there, which number in excess of 2,100 specimens, and is using their unique natural spot patterns to identify and distinguish every single individual giraffe throughout its life in an area of over 4,000 square km, utilising a specifically designed computer program.

During the course of this project, the researchers have discovered among the normal Masai giraffes in Tarangire National Park a very unusual female leucistic (white) specimen, which they have dubbed Omo. Her markings are little more than shadows, but she sports a very distinctive red mane, and has dark eyes, thus confirming that she is leucistic and not an albino (in which situation her eyes would be pink, her markings non-existent and her mane white). Like albinism, however, leucism is genetically induced, but by different mutant genes from those responsible for albinism.