A giraffe calf born at African Lion Safari in September 2025 is the son of the first giraffe ever born in Canada through artificial insemination.
Kiwavi, a healthy male, arrived on September 17, 2025 at the Cambridge, Ontario park. He has stayed close to his mother while working out his surroundings, which is what young giraffe do.
His mother made history first
Kiwavi’s mother, Safari, was born on December 31, 2013, the first giraffe in Canada conceived through artificial insemination and only the second in the world at the time.
She weighed 60 kilograms and stood 175 centimeters at birth, to mother Calgary and father Jimmy. The park describes her arrival as the result of years of work by its animal care team developing reproductive techniques aimed at strengthening giraffe genetics across managed populations.
Why the genetics matter
Giraffe numbers have fallen sharply. From roughly 140,000 animals in 1998, the population dropped to close to half that by 2012. Several subspecies are now listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, among them the Rothschild giraffe, with fewer than 1,100 left in the wild.
Safari has now passed on her genetics as well as her place in that history. Her son is the next generation of the same program.
