Questão 3171908

Another rare spotless giraffe found — the first ever seen in the wild

1. Just weeks after a giraffe at a U.S. zoo was born missing its characteristic spots, another
2. spotless giraffe calf has now been seen and photographed in the wild for the first time. The
3. unprecedented sighting occurred at Mount Etjo Safari Lodge, a private game reserve in central
4. Namibia. Tour guide Eckart Demasius saw and photographed the solid-brown calf during a game
5. drive on the roughly 90,000-acre reserve, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.
6. Demasius, who was not immediately available for comment, shared his photos with the giraffe
7. nonprofit.
8. Sara Ferguson, a wildlife veterinarian and conservation health coordinator at the foundation,
9. says the two recent spotless sightings are pure coincidence and that there’s no data to suggest
10. this coloring is occurring more frequently than it had in the past. This finding is just another
11. example of “the weird way the world works” she says, adding that she’s “so amazed and pleased
12. there is so much more to learn and discover about giraffes”.
13. The spotless reticulated giraffe born at Brights Zoo in Limestone, Tennessee, earlier this
14. summer was recently named Kipekee, which means “unique” in Swahili. The recent wild sighting
15. occurred in another giraffe subspecies found in southern Africa, the Angolan giraffe. Before these
16. recent births, a giraffe with all-brown coloring was last seen at a Tokyo zoo in 1972.
17. Scientists, including Ferguson, believe the solid coloring is likely due to one or more genetic
18. mutations that haven’t yet been identified. Some aspects of giraffe spots are passed down from
19. mother to calf, according to a 2018 study in the journal PeerJ, and larger, rounder spots appear
20. to be linked to higher survival rates for younger giraffes, but the reasons for that remain unclear.
21. Derek Lee, a biology professor at Penn State University and a co-author on the PeerJ study, says
22. that technically these two recent examples are not spotless animals, but instead — "one-spot-
23. all-over giraffes". He’s said that it’s impossible to say what this genetic anomaly means for the
24. animal’s health, but there’s no evidence the color difference puts the animal at a disadvantage.
25. “We have a sample size here of one, so time will tell what happens”.

(Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/spotless-giraffe-found-in-the-wild-for-the-first-time – text especially adapted for this test).

Which of the following is described by the word in bold “frequently” (l. 10) in that sentence?