Celebrate giraffe's birthday at zoo

A big celebration is planned Monday for one of the tallest animals.

Twelve foot tall Jaffa Prince is turning two and he is going to have a big birthday party.

"That's going to be a lot of fun activities for parents and kids. It's from 11-3," said Anne McDonough, Integrated Media Coordinator.

There will be party games and activities for the whole family, and a special, tasty treat for the birthday boy.

"You can make your own animal birthday hat, and for Jaffa specifically at noon he will get his own special birthday cake enrichment, so a lot of fun treats for him and of course a fun viewing for us."

While at the event, patrons can join the animal birthday party club.

"If they get three stamps for going to three birthday parties, they will enter to win their own safari birthday party and if they get five stamps for going to all five animal birthday parties they will be entered to win an elephant encounter," said McDonough.

There will be two other birthday parties later this summer.

"The next one going on is for our bald eagles, Spirit and Glory, the last birthday party is for Amber actually, another giraffe."

And throughout the year, Jaffa and the rest of the animals at the zoo get to play with enrichment tools, which encourage natural behavior.

"And stimulates their brains, and challenges them to think about things and work for their food. You know in the wild they would have to work for food, they would have to look for food, they would have to compete for food. So this encourages all that kind of behavior," said Rachel McClung, Zookeeper for Fabric of Africa exhibit.

Giraffes especially like to use their 18 inch tongues.

"We do a lot of puzzle feeders with them because in the wild they use their tongue to eat. They have a prehensile tongue and they will actually wrap it around things to eat," said McClung.

They have a variety of feeders, like a ball with hidden peanut butter, and plastic jugs filled with grain.

"We can actually put stuff on the tree; peanut butter, molasses, stuff like that for them to lick and smell and check out. We can do scent enrichment. We use a lot of spices. Some they like, some they don't. But even if they don't like it that's okay because they would encounter things in the wild that they didn't necessarily like," added McClung.

Enrichment tools are placed at various heights and locations.

"You don't always want to put it right in their face you want to make them work for it, put it at different heights. And giraffe can bend down and get that. In the wild they have to bend down for water and they will graze in the ground occasionally, so that encourages them to bend down. It's good exercise to make them work for stuff."

Click here for more information on the Animal Birthday Party Club.