Adorable Baby Giraffe At Kansas City Zoo Sticks Out Tongue: Watch

KANSAS CITY, MO — Temperatures will have to warm up before Kansas City Zoo visitors can see the sweet face of Dixie, a Masai giraffe born to Lizzie on Feb. 2, in person, but the adorable calf is already winning hearts in videos. The zoo is live streaming the action in the giraffe barn for now, and in a short video posted on the zoo’s Facebook page, Dixie sticks out her tongue like a precocious toddler. And viewers absolutely drown in her big, long-lashed eyes.

Dixie weighed 105 founds and was five feet tall when she was born at 4:57 a.m. on Feb. 2. That’s within the range of average for newborn giraffe calves, which grow in their mothers’ wombs for about 14 months. It takes a mother giraffe between two and six hours to give birth, and when the calf is born, it falls to the ground — a natural process that doesn’t injure the newborn. They’re up and walking in 20 minutes to an hour.

Masai giraffes are the largest species of giraffe and hail from central Africa. They are powerful animals, and a swift kick can immobilize or kill most predators in the wild. An adult male can reach a height of about 19½ feet, but females are a bit smaller, reaching between 16 and feet.

And they’re all leg and neck, each part of their anatomy about 6½ feet long. Because their legs are long, they can run extremely fast, at about 35 mph at top speed. Their bodies can weigh up to three tons; males can weigh up to 3,000 pounds, while females like Dixie will grow to 1,300 to 2,000 tons at maturity. Their feet are about a foot long, their tongue are 18 to 20 inches long and their tails are the longest of any terrestrial animals at about 3.3 feet in length.

Lizzie, who is 5, isn’t fully grown and won’t be for several more years, zoo spokeswoman Vicky McMillan told KMBC-TV.

The zoo’s live feed of Dixie runs 24 hours a day, but because the barn is dark in the evening and overnight, the best views are during the daytime hours. When the giraffes do go outside to roam, the temperature has to reach 60 degrees before noon, McMillan said

“We need it to be nice and warm for them to go out since they are from Africa,” she told the television station.

Zoo fans can help provide care and food for Dixie and the rest of the giraffe herd at the Kansas City Zoo by “adopting” the new calf. The fee includes a framed photo, a giraffe plush toy, a birth certificate, a giraffe fact sheet, an official personalized adoption certificate, an invitation to the annual Adopt a Wild Child picnic, and a subscription to Expeditions, a newsletter from the Friends of the Zoo. Contributions are tax deductible.

Masai giraffe are native to Africa and are found in the savannas in central and south Kenya, as well as in Tanzania. The Rhodesian giraffe, an ecotype — which means the differences are too subtle to be considered a subspecies — is native to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, though a few have been relocated to Rwanda.

They are considered vulnerable to extinction, and the wild population has decreased by up to 52 percent due to poaching.

Here’s a peek at what you’ll see on the live cam from the Kansas City Zoo Facebook page.

Patch has reached out to the Kansas City Zoo. If we hear back, we'll update this post.

File photo of baby giraffe by Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images