In less than two weeks after the world observed the the World Giraffe Day on June 21, the pictures of an American woman posing with a dead giraffe that she had killed while hunting in South Africa, have gone viral. Tess Thompson Talley, the hunter, is seen grinning in front of a dead giraffe with a hunting rifle in hand.
Though the clicks belonged to June 2017 hunting incident, they have hit the internet recently. A local Twitter user, AfricLandPost, posted the pictures on the social media platform. "White American savage who is partly a Neanderthal comes to Africa and shoot down a very rare black giraffe courtesy of South Africa stupidity. Her name is Tess Thompson Talley. Please share," the user captioned the post.
White american savage who is partly a neanderthal comes to Africa and shoot down a very rare black giraffe coutrsey of South Africa stupidity. Her name is Tess Thompson Talley. Please share pic.twitter.com/hSK93DOOaz
— AfricaDigest (@africlandpost) June 16, 2018
Talley has not only been slammed by the locales but also by many celebrities who have criticized the act of hunting given the extinction of the species from the planet. Actress Debra Messing was among the first few public figures who opposed such a cruel act, calling the hunter "disgusting, vile, amoral, heartless, selfish murderer."
In a press statement, the American woman defended herself saying that she helped other animals by killing it. The giraffe was unable to breed because of being too old and he had already killed three young bulls, she added.
"The giraffe I hunted was the South African subspecies of giraffe. The number of this subspecies is actually increasing due, in part, to hunters and conservation efforts paid for in large part by big-game hunting," she told the Today show. "The breed is not rare in any way other than it was very old. Giraffes get darker with age."
The viral pictures reminded the world of the cruelty of the same level as seen in the killing of Cecil the lion in 2015. The matter has come into the limelight within the two weeks of the celebration of World Giraffe Day on June 21. The giraffes have the longest neck and hence the World Giraffe Conservation Foundation declared the longest day of the year as the World Giraffe Day.
The outrage that emerged as a result of the killing of the giraffe is evident in view of the fast plummeting population of the species by up to 40 percent in the last 30 years. The International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN has already put giraffe under the "Red List" as the species that is nearing its extinction.
