Dr. Cliff Redford: Upsetting Giraffe News - January 8, 2026
episodePreviously titled “Dr. Cliff Redford: Upsetting Giraffe News - January 7, 2026” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 5, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper. It's that time of the week, vet talk or pet talk, not sure what the name of what we do is. And there's very good news for those who have a personal vendetta against giraffes. But for the rest of us, kind of horrifying news. A giraffe has sadly passed away after being caught in a doorway at the Toronto Zoo. We are joined by Dr. Cliff Redford, a veterinarian, probably. I've not inspected his certificate yet. to discuss this upsetting story and maybe discuss exotic animals and how we should keep them, etc. Cliff, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
If I send you a copy of my diploma, would you believe it?
Well, I mean, it could be a forgery. It'd be pretty easy to forge it. Do you believe I have an undergraduate degree? Do you believe I have a high school diploma?
I don't know. I never really thought about it. Exactly. Why wouldn't you? But I mean, you're not, that's not a credential that, I don't know. Anyways.
I'm a certified neighborhood idiot, but there's no board certified.
See, dad, I believe.
What happened to the giraffe at the Toronto Zoo?
I do not need to see paperwork for that.
Cliff, I believe you're a veterinarian. I see the videos. I saw a wonderful documentary of you practicing veterinary medicine. I believe I'm just messing with you. I'm not practicing it.
I'm doing it. I'm playing. I'm not playing it. I'm not whatever.
Why is that? Why is that with like veterinarian and medical science? They say practice. It seems. Yeah, it does seem stupid.
Maybe it's because we're always attempting to become better and get better. you know, perfection and we know we'll never reach it. So we want to always act like we're trying to improve. I don't know.
If I'm an actor and I say I'm at my practice, you think, oh, you're just not good enough yet to do the thing you need to do. But if I'm a doctor and I say I'm at my practice, this is going nowhere, Cliff. Let's talk about the giraffe.
If you're an actor and you're practicing, you're doing a warm up. You're doing a what's it called? An audition.
Let's talk about these giraffes before. We've lost literally everyone. And by one, I mean my mother. She's our only listener. We've lost her. So let's get her back on track here.
Come on, Mama Cooper. Come listen. Okay, Kiko. 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. Aww. He was an expecting father. Miss Starry is the female that was carrying Kiko's calf. Oh, man. So very, very sad with that. So all this really sucks. The thing that... You know, we could talk about zoos and, you know, people are sort of slowly sliding away from zoos.
On the one hand, you're keeping non-domesticated animals in cages and that can't be good. On the other hand, they're like a wonderful opportunity for like rescuing animals that like... never lived in the wild, also educating people, which can go a long way for conservation. So, like, I'm of mixed feelings with zoos.
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