A baby white giraffe and its mother have been spotted in Kenya

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September 14, 2017 1:40 PM

Giraffes of this type have only been spotted twice before.

A pair of rare white giraffes have been spotted in Kenya.

The rare animals — a mother and baby — were discovered by villagers near the Ishaqbini conservancy in Garissa, eastern Kenya.

Locals first saw the animals this June, the Hirola Conservation Program (HCP) wrote in a blog post, but did not record any footage of them.

Conservationists followed up the reports two months later, and managed to track down the animals in August. They have only been seen twice before in Kenya and Tanzania.

"They were so close and extremely calm and seemed not disturbed by our presence," the HCP said.

"The mother kept pacing back and forth a few yards infront [sic] of us while signalling the baby Giraffe to hide behind the bushes — a characteristic of most wildlife mothers in the wild to prevent the predation of their young."

Take a look at the HCP's video below, which has been online since August, but started gaining attention online in mid-September:

A baby white giraffe and its mother have been spotted in Kenya

The giraffes are this colour because of a condition called leucism.

It's different from being albino, which prevents animals and humans from producing any kind of pigment, as can be seen in their white skin and pink eyes, according to the National Geographic.

Leucism, however, leaves animals mostly white but still able to produce pigment on some parts of their body, like their eyes. The white giraffes in the video have dark eyes.

The baby giraffe's skin is also darker than its mother — as can be seen in the light brown spots all over its body — but the HCP believes they will fade as the baby approaches adulthood.

White giraffes have become an increasingly common sight around Kenya and Tanzania in recent years. They were first spotted in Tarangire National Park in northern Tanzania in April 2015, and again in the same Ishaqbini conservancy in March 2016.

"There is a high chance we might see more white giraffes in the future," Abdullahi Ali, the founder of the HCP, told Business Insider on Thursday.

The map below shows the locations of the three white giraffe sightings:

Giraffes, the world's tallest land mammal, are listed as "vulnerable" — one step below the "endangered" category — by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which estimate about the current population to be just over 97,500. They are predominantly found in southern and eastern Africa.

The white giraffes are still in the Ishaqbini area, and the HCP is working with local communities and conservation groups to protect the rare animals, Ali said.

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