Giraffe goes on a 40-hour road trip to find warmth

A giraffe named Benito started a 40-hour road trip Monday to leave behind the cold and loneliness of Mexico's northern border city of Ciudad Juarez to find warmth - and maybe a mate - in his new home 2,000 kilometers to the south.

A campaign by animal rights activists won the four-year-old giraffe a transfer to an animal park in Puebla state in central Mexico, where he will join a group of resident giraffes and enjoy a more suitable climate.

It has been a long and lonesome road for Benito. Jealousy forced him to leave his home at a zoo in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa; he was taken last year to a city-run park in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas to lead a life alone.

With temperatures in Ciudad Juarez reaching as low as 4 degrees C on Jan. 22, Benito set off in a crate strapped to the back of a flat-bed truck. He is a tall load, about 16 meters high, and the roof of his crate can be lowered to pass under bridges.

The animal's head sticks up through the top of the big wooden and metal box, but a frame allows a tarp to cover over Benito and insulate him from the cold, wind and rain as well as from noise and the sight of landscape speeding by.

Residents gathered to say goodbye late Sunday in Ciudad Juarez as a crane lifted the container holding the giraffe onto the truck in preparation for the journey. "We love you, Benito," some of them shouted.

"We're a little sad that he's leaving. but it also gives us great pleasure... The weather conditions are not suitable for him," said Flor Ortega, a 23-year-old who said she had spent her entire life visiting Modesto, another giraffe who was at the zoo for two decades before dying in 2022. Benito arrived last May.

Benito is being transported across Mexico to...