Why Live-Stream of Pregnant Giraffe Got Yanked Off YouTube

It's back, but not before complaints of nudity and sexually explicit content
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 23, 2017 2:32 PM CST
Vid of Pregnant Giraffe Yanked for Being Too Sexual
Welcome back, April.   (YouTube)

It was up, then it was taken down, now it's up again. A live cam trained on a pregnant giraffe at a New York animal center was taken offline by YouTube, but after an appeal, the stream is once again up and running, NBC4 reports. The controversy had swirled around April, a 15-year-old giraffe at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, who's due to give birth to a calf with her mate, Oliver, any day now. But while park owner Jordan Patch saw the video stream, set up in anticipation of the calf's birth, as educational, some animal activists saw otherwise and lobbied YouTube to take the stream down for hosting nudity and sexually explicit content, per Mashable.

Patch took to Facebook Live Thursday morning to lay into the "extremists" and to tell viewers that he was on the "same team" as anyone who wants the animals cared for and that "instead of sitting behind a keyboard or holding up [a] protest sign, get behind conservation." YouTube tells Mashable that, due to the volume of content it's reviewing, it sometimes errs when it gets a complaint about a video flouting the site's community guidelines, but that its appeals process helps keep things in check—which it apparently did for April's live-stream, which returned shortly after 9am Thursday. As for the upcoming birth, Patch tells NBC4: "Once hooves appear, it will be 60 minutes before it's out and on the ground." Keep an eye on April here. (Giraffes have been experiencing a "devastating" decline.)

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