Celebrating the life of Pansy, Nguuni’s oldest Giraffe!

  Celebrating the life of Pansy, our oldest giraffe at Nguuni Nature Sanctuary. Pansy lived to 32, an extraordinary lifetime given that the average life expectancy for giraffes in captivity is 28. Pansy was born 1990, and at the age of 3, her mother Daisy died in a road accident, meaning that she grew up as an orphan. She spent the next few years at the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi, before being translocated to the quarry ecosystem, famously known as the Haller Park. In 2004, she was moved to the Nguuni Nature Sanctuary, where she has called home to date. Pansy was a crossbreed between a pure Rothschild and Massai Giraffe. In her lifetime, she gave birth 6 times: Saba, Tisa, Furaha, Katy, Sue and Xena.

She was the friendly ring-leader of all the females,  usually found with Katy or Chizi, and was easily identified by her dark forehead and wrinkles on her face. On behalf of the Haller team in Kenya, we are proud and grateful for the opportunity to work alongside Pansy, and celebrate that she successfully managed to live longer in captivity, breaking the record believed to be 28 years.