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Baby Giraffe Named in Honor of Red Sox       Send a link to a friend

[October 30, 2007]  BOSTON (AP) -- To honor the Red Sox's four-game World Series sweep of the Colorado Rockies, staff at the Franklin Park Zoo on Monday named a baby giraffe Sox.

In a statement, Zoo New England President and Chief Executive Officer John Linehan said the staff chose the name because of the female calf's long, lanky legs.

Other names considered were Red, Fenway, Champion and Boston.

Sox weighed 154 pounds at birth, standing 6 feet 2 inches tall.

The calf was born after Boston's Game 1 victory, but staff held off naming it because they didn't want to jinx the team's chances, according to the statement.

Sox is a member of the Maasai Giraffe subspecies, also known as Kilimanjaro Giraffe.

They are the tallest land animals, using their unique long necks and tongues to reach vegetation inaccessible to other herbivores.

Members of the subspecies survive in the wild only in the sprawling plains Tanzania and Kenya, in East Africa.

[The Associated Press]

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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