Updated at noon ET Sunday
For a large portion of the Internet, patience has finally paid off.
April, a giraffe at New York's Animal Adventure Park, gave birth Saturday on a widely-and-intensely-watched live stream.
According to The Associated Press, at least 1.2 million people watched the event on the Animal Adventure Park's YouTube page.
BuzzFeed News has isolated the exact moment of birth and it can be viewed below. Warning: like most live mammal births, it's kind of messy.
OMG April the Giraffe has given birth 🎉 pic.twitter.com/xiZYU90pIY
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 15, 2017
"His entrance into the world was unnerving to even those of us who have witnessed animal births previously," said Animal Adventure Park owner, Jordan Patch in a press release. "Giraffes give birth standing up, which means when the calf is ready to be born, it exits its mother hooves first from six feet off the floor, making for a very exciting event!"
Shortly thereafter, the newborn calf took its first steps.
The feed was launched in February and quickly picked up an intense following of viewers hoping to catch the first glimpses of a baby giraffe. In between the cam's launch and payoff, an apparel line sprang up dedicated to the pregnant April, as well as a GoFundMe page to shower the zoo with funds to care for calf when it arrived.
But in February, viewers were left briefly in the dark after the video was flagged for "nudity and sexual content." The shutdown didn't last long, however, and fervent April watchers were once again allowed their favorite Beckettian pastime.
According to the zoo's Facebook page, the baby giraffe had a check up and is doing well. He weighed 129 pounds and was 5'9 at the time of the post.
The zoo announced in a press release that there will be a naming contest for the new giraffe. You can enter and vote as many times as you would like — though votes cost a dollar each.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
