Dr. Cliff Redford

Kiko, the 13-year-old male Maasai giraffe, unfortunately passed away.

He got trapped in this giant...

automatic door.

And, you know, their necks are very fragile.

They got these beautiful six foot necks that can rotate left and right and up and down.

And they're so flexible, but it also makes them fragile.

So the thought from the experts and they because they're a proper accredited zoo, they've sent Kiko's body off to the University of Guelph for postmortem just to make sure.

But they're quite confident that he suffered an injury to his neck.

The issue too with these herd animals is they can, when they get trapped, they get this condition called capture myopathy.

Myopathy basically means disease of the muscles.

So they become so stressed out.

The body produces all these sort of adrenaline chemicals and endorphins.

And the muscle starts to break down very quickly.

The heart starts going too fast.

And they basically have a physical and emotional panic attack and it can kill them.

They can have a heart attack.

They can have all these toxins that are released from their muscles into their body.

So maybe that played a role.

You know, it's very, very sad.

Kiko was an expecting father.