If animals in zoos get sick, staff more and more often turn to doctors. And they can help. As now in San Diego, where a giraffe named Msituni was born with curved front claws. The animal keepers feared that the calf would not survive – after all, it could not be breastfed and could not walk.
So it was clear: the baby giraffe needs splints, which is a huge challenge: the newborn was 178 cm tall and was growing every day. So they turned to orthopedic technologists at the Hanger Clinic, where Ara Mirzayan met his first animal patient.
“It was so surreal when I first heard about it,” orthopedic surgeon Mirzayan told The Associated Press this week. A few days later, the baby proudly visited the giraffe, which meanwhile was wandering around beside the other giraffes without any problems.
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