5 celebrity wild animals in Kenya

Tira

Zebras are black in colour and have white strips but Tira is perhaps the only Zebra with a different colour. When Antony Tira, a tour guide at the Maasai Mara Game Reserve first came across her, he thought someone had painted the newborn zebra. The baby zebra had a hairless tail, chocolate brown coat with white polka spots and few small incomplete white strips. 

Tira, the tour guide, took photographs of the polka zebra and shared them on social media. The photographs went viral. Tourists swarmed into the Mara to get a glimpse of the rare animal. The young Zebra was named Tira, after the tour guide.

Tira, the polka zebra continues to make headline news. Last month, reports of him grazing with his parents in Northern Serengeti emerged in Tanzanian media. It is believed that the rare zebra - thought to be a month old now moved to Tanzania during the annual wildebeest migration - a time when thousands of wild beasts and other grazers move across the Serengeti in Northern Tanzania and Kenya’s Maasai Mara ecosystems as they search for green pasture.

Experts say the foal’s rare coat is caused by melanism, a genetic abnormality linked to the amount of melanin, which affects the pigmentation of the fur. That means the young zebra has excess melanin, making its skin darker.

Elsa 

Elsa is probably the only lionesses raised by humans. This unusual relationship started in 1956 when game warden George Adamson shot dead a lioness in self-defence, leaving her cubs orphaned at just four days old. Two of the cubs were taken to the Netherlands Rotterdam Zoo but George and his wife Joy Adamson adopted one. They named her Elsa.

The couple treated Elsa like a pet. They trained her on how to hunt and to survive on her own before releasing her into the woods. They later documented and shared her life’s story in a book, Born Free. The book, a bestseller, earned Elsa worldwide fame.

Three years later, Elsa became a mother. Her life’s story and that of her three cubs was published in a book: Living Free. Her rise to fame was unstoppable but not until babesiosis knocked her down. She was only five when the tick-borne disease took her life.

Although Elsa lost her life, she didn’t lose her fame. Instead, she became a potent symbol of lion conservation and her story pushed wildlife conservation onto the international agenda. 

In 1966, her life’s story, as told by the Adamsons in the book was made into a film. The film; Born Free won several accolades including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a Grammy Award besides being nominated for other two Golden Globe Awards and the Directors Guide of America (DGA) award.

Elsa was buried in Meru National Park. Today, tourists still visit her tombstone in homage to her memory. 

Manno

Manno is probably the world’s most travelled chimpanzee albeit under gruelling circumstances. He is thought to have been born in Central Africa in 2012 before being abducted less than six months later and smuggled to the Middle East. He wound up at the Duhok Zoo in Iraqi Kurdistan where he slept in a cage, ate alien food and was constantly harassed by visitors. 

But it is this gruesome experience that catapulted him to fame. It all started when Spencer Sekyer, a Canadian high school teacher volunteering in Dohok started working at the zoo in his spare time. Thinking that he was a vet, the zoo gave him charge of Manno. He took the offer. By the time Sekyer’s short stint in Iraq was winding down, Sekyer’s relationship with the chimp had matured into friendship. He returned to Canada but his friendship bond with the chimp never loosened. 

Sekyer was determined to help Manno out of the cage. It would take three years however for his efforts to bear fruit. He managed to get powerful supporters on board, including, the Kurdistan Prime Minister who decreed that the Chimp be flown to Kenya. In November 2016 Manno arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport where he was quarantined for several days before being taken to Ol Pejeta Conservancy’s Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Nanyuki, Laikipia County.

Kamunyak

It is not common for wild animals to raise children of other animals outside their families and species.  But in 2002, a lioness at Samburu National Park shocked many when she was seen lying side by side with an Oryx calf under an acacia tree. She had taken the Oryx calf under her care. Other lions were trying to attack the newborn but the guardian lioness warded them off. This was her third adopted baby Oryx!

“This had to be a message from God. This was a miracle. Kamunyak really seemed to be infatuated by the baby. So they would walk together, lie flat down under a tree, curl up next to each other. It was very moving to watch,” Suba Douglas-Hamilton, a conservationist from Save the Elephant said in a documentary.

The lioness was named Kamunyak, meaning, ‘the blessed one’ in the local Samburu language. She defied her predatory instinct to protect what would be her prey. But this fairytale ended in devastation for Kamunyak. When the baby Oryx wondered out of her sight for a while, a hungry lion attacked and killed it.

“She was clearly terrified of the male lion but she acted exactly as if she was a mother losing her cub,” Suba said in the documentary.

Previously, another young antelope under her care had been taken away from her and placed in a zoo after showing signs of malnourishment. Adopting the calves, however, had not robbed Kamunyak of her predatory instinct, neither did losing them take her motherly instinct away. Having failed to save the Oryx from the jaws of the lion, she killed and fed on an impala a few days later. And within a month, she adopted 5 more Oryx calves.

Ishaqbini’s White Giraffe

A normal giraffe is at least 6M tall and has a distinct spotted coat with a neck that can be up to 1.8M.  In 2017, villagers in Garissa County spotted a pair of snow-white giraffes walking together near the Ishaqbini Hirola Conservancy, the second such sighting in the world. The two animals were mother and calf. The villagers informed rangers from the conservancy who filmed the two giraffes and published the footage. 

“These rare snow-white giraffes shocked many locals including myself but these gave us renewed energy to protect and save our unique wildlife. I am positive these rare giraffes will change the perception of outsiders regarding northeastern Kenya in which many people have negative perceptions,” Hirola Conservation Programme Director & Founder, Dr Abdullahi Ali said in a blog post.

It is thought that the giraffes have the rare colouring due to leucism, a condition which causes partial loss of pigmentation in the skin.

In June this year, the Kenya Wildlife Service announced that the snow-white giraffe was pregnant but did not reveal when she would calve indicating that the number of white giraffes in the country was rising. Then the anticipated news came in last month: “Ishaqbini Conservancy's famous 'white giraffe' has given birth to a second healthy calf - with the same genetic condition as her - bringing the total number of white giraffes in the coastal conservancy to three,” the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT)  posted online.