Animal Adventure Park Live Cam: Crisis Hits As April The Giraffe Footage Stops

On Friday, March 24, a crisis hit when the Animal Adventure Park live cam’s footage of April, the giraffe, stopped. Millions of people are following April’s pregnancy as anticipation builds more each day for her to give birth. It came to an abrupt halt in the early evening hours, which created pandemonium.

The live streaming of April has hooked a lot of people. They’re addicted to tuning in and seeing what their favorite giraffe is up to, which is normally pacing in her stall, eating, or checking in with her mate, Oliver. Each day brings more excitement towards her calf’s impending birth.

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Things hit a bit of a snag on Friday when hundreds of thousands of fans were watching April carrying out her normal activities in her stall at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York. April’s journey is captured on a device that has no concept of its functioning importance to humans, however. There have been hiccups with the animal park’s live cam going down on occasion, but on Friday, it stirred quite a commotion when the footage stopped. It turned into enough of a crisis that staff at Animal Adventure Park reacted to the panic on its Facebook page.

“Cam Down – We are aware. Receiving 2,000 emails to tell us it’s down, only slows us and the computers down. Please refrain.”

Facebook users were appalled that anyone would email the park over the live cam going down because the staff would obviously know when it was happening. Many worried that the thousands of emails that Animal Adventure Park received over its live cam footage stopping, would make them feel inclined to stop recording April.

“People… this is why we can’t have nice things. Let them be! No wonder they don’t want to continue having live feeds after the birth.”

“You know they do not HAVE to do any of this, come on people they know what they are doing, wait patiently and let them do what they gotta do to get back up and running! Thank you for taking your time to share this great experience with us Animal Adventure Park!”

“Animal Adventure Park your [sic] doing an amazing job, I’m sorry you deal with so many stupid people.”

“Maybe the title should be ‘calm down’ lol. Not sure why people freak and think that no one knows about it???? Prettttty sure you guys have it all under control. Goodness.”

The park wrote another post after reading the long list of comments.

“We don’t control the weather or signal broadcast – what’s in our control is managed!”

The live streaming resumed around 6:45 p.m.

No significant changes in the pregnant giraffe have been documented as of Friday. On Thursday, it was revealed that April was feeling “moody” and more “cranky.” She has a lot of swelling of her belly and is pacing a lot. Active labor hasn’t yet started, because she still has wax caps. Once these disappear, the show begins and April will soon deliver her new calf. Since giraffes have mastered how to hide their labor pains from predators, it’s almost impossible to tell when they’re about to give birth. The only indicator that birth is about to happen is when the giraffe’s water breaks or a hoof is seen coming out of the animal’s back end.

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As of Friday evening’s update, the park informed followers that milk is starting to fill in April’s right udders.

“This afternoon’s vet observations suggests milk has begun to fill the right udders. Wax caps remain and back end swell has continued to maintain a significant size. Appetite strong, moodiness returned this evening.”

April’s baby giraffe will be about 150 pounds and six-feet-tall at birth. He or she will be with April between six and 10 months until it’s time to be weaned. At that point, the new addition will be relocated to another facility to be part of its breeding program.

Animal Adventure Park’s live cam may encounter malfunctions occasionally, but streaming of April is usually back up within an hour.

[Featured Image by Kromka/Shutterstock]