LUFKIN, Texas — Officials at an eastern Texas zoo are mourning the death of its 31-year-old giraffe.
According to a Facebook post on Saturday, the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin said that Twiga, a female Maasai giraffe, died on Friday.
The giraffe lived to be 31 years, 9 months, 7 days, and zoo officials claimed that Twiga held the record for the oldest living giraffe under human care.
The Guinness Book of Records does not list such a record, although the website does note that a giraffe living in a South Korea safari park holds the record for most offspring while in captivity, with 18.
Officials at the Ellen Trout Zoo said that Twiga was born on Oct. 1, 1991, at the Los Angeles Zoo, KTRE-TV reported. The giraffe came to the Texas zoo from a facility in Racine, Wisconsin, on June 4, 2008, according to the television station.
According to CNN, a zoo in Japan said in 2021 that the country’s oldest giraffe died shortly before her 32nd birthday. In 2017, the Oklahoma City Zoo said that its Rothschild’s giraffe died at the age of 32, the cable news outlet reported. According to KFOR-TV, Ursula was the oldest living giraffe in the U.S.
Twiga will be missed by Ellen Trout Zoo officials.
“Twiga helped our other two giraffes, Kellen and Luna, feel comfortable in their new home in Lufkin,” the zoo’s director, Gordon Henley, said in a statement. “She will be greatly missed.”