Video: Face to face with a camera-chomping giraffe at Como Park Zoo
MPR News reporter Tim Post put GoPro cameras on the giraffe feeding baskets at Como Park Zoo and captured an eye-level view of the 14-foot animals.
The video even gave senior zookeeper Allison Jungheim a new look at the animals she works with everyday.
"It's a great view of them, you can really see how long their necks are," Jungheim said. "This is a neat vantage point."
Four giraffes make their home at the Como Park Zoo, in St. Paul.
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There's Skeeter, a male who just turned 5 in July and tops out at about 14 feet. He'll grow another 4 feet in the next few years.
There are three female giraffes at Como: Daisy, Clover and her daughter Rosie, who was born less than a year ago at the zoo. Her dad is Skeeter.
The elevated feeding baskets are about 13 feet off the ground. In the morning zookeepers fill them with hay. Each giraffe eats about four pounds a day, in addition to another couple of pounds of food in pellet form.
The giraffes were a bit skittish around the cameras attached to their feeding stations. Jungheim says that's because while they're curious, they're also cautious animals.
"Even though they are really large and can kill a lion with a kick, they want to make sure that nothing is going to hurt them," Jungheim said.
Skeeter, the male giraffe, was a bit more adventurous, frequently sniffing the cameras and even chomping on them from time to time.
After about 20 minutes, Skeeter had enough of the attention and decided to tear down the two cameras.
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