Zafara: the African Beauty
In the electronic age, it’s easier than at any time in history to find photographs, films, illustrations, and paintings of exotic animals. This is a relatively recent change that we are privileged to experience and it can be starkly strange to realize that the vast majority of people throughout history never knew about or saw, for example, a kangaroo.
The global diaspora of large charismatic wildlife in menageries, zoos, and circuses is another fairly modern development. There are currently hundreds of giraffes in European zoos, a few centuries ago that number was zero. This is the story of Zarafa, a giraffe that proved to be a great curiosity to 19th-century Europeans and who is still the focus of fascination and remembrance to this day.
Governments gifting exotic animals to other states must be one of the oldest forms of international diplomacy. Rhinoceroses and elephants were common creatures to receive such treatment, though the species that stands out in recent decades has been the many giant pandas shipped from China. Giraffes too served as geopolitical gestures. Muhammad Ali, the founder of modern Egypt, would give a trio of Northern Giraffes as a sign of goodwill to Europe’s monarchs in 1827. One was sent to Charles X of France, another to Francis I of Austria, and the last to George IV of Britain. These were the first lofty camelopards to reach Europe’s shores since the House of Medici briefly possessed one for a few months in the 1480s.
Zarafa was captured as a six-foot-tall baby from the wild by Arab hunters. She would be sustained on gallons of cows’ milk daily. The journey from the depths of Africa to her new home in Paris would take a long time, so much so that she would grow to adult size by arrival.
Zarafa sailed up the Nile, across the Mediterranean, and reached Marseille. From there she was led on an epic trek across France to the capital. This leg of the journey lasted forty-one days, in every town she passed through she drew great crowds. Newspapers christened her "la Belle Africaine", the African Beauty. Giraffe-mania took over the continent, and hundreds of thousands visited her in Paris. Until her death in 1845, Zarafa would be attended to by her Sudanese keeper, Atir. After passing, she was turned into a taxidermic display and continues to be marveled at in the La Rochelle natural history museum.
As for the other two giraffes who were shipped north over the sea, the Austrian would die in the emperor’s collection after a year, while the British one would find its abode at London Zoo. There it would expire in two years’ time.
Curiously, it was not until a 1998 history book by Michael Allin that Zarafa would receive her name. In 2012 she would be the star of a French animated film that loosely retold her story. Puppeteer Sebastian Mayer would recreate her trip crossing France in 2023, using a life-size giraffe puppet. Such attention Zarafa continues to receive symbolizes the incredible power which individual animals can possess long after they’ve gone.
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