Video of Giraffe Lifting Boy Into Air Watched More Than 1M Times

A video of a giraffe picking up a boy has been viewed one million times on Twitter. The 11-second clip was shared on Friday and it doesn't appear that either the child or the animal came to any harm.

The video was posted by Twitter user Akan thee Stallion and had been watched 1 million times on Saturday morning. It shows a small boy offering a leaf to a tall giraffe standing in a pen.

The giraffe grabs the leaf with its mouth and pulls upwards but inadvertently lifts the boy with it for a few seconds. An adult man and woman in the video, possibly his parents, appear temporarily panicked until the child returns safely to the ground.

A narrator featured in the video notes: "This giraffe wasn't playing around."

It's not clear exactly how tall the giraffe is or how far the boy is lifted, but it appears to be at least six feet off the ground.

"Lifted him up to glory chile," joked Twitter user Akan thee Stallion in her post, adding three "laughing cry" emojis.

Giraffes are the tallest mammals on Earth and the males of some species can reach heights of 18 feet. The tallest giraffe known was a male of the Masai species named George, who was just under 20 feet tall and lived at Chester Zoo in Cheshire, U.K.

According to the zoo's website: "He had to duck his head to get in and out of the giraffe house! He was a bit of a cheeky giraffe too – every time someone walked through the door he was able to bend his neck and pinch their hats off their heads. He even ate some of them too!"

The video was posted to a TikTok account called UNILAD Adventure four days ago. That video has racked up 17.6 million views on the video-sharing site. UNILAD is a British internet media company and website owned by LADbible. Their Twitter account initially shared the video on June 1.

It was not immediately clear where or when the video was recorded.

According to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the global population of giraffes is around 111,000 and they are considered "vulnerable", while two subspecies are listed as "critically endangered."

"Giraffe are highly social animals and live in herds of 15-20 female giraffe and some young males," the trust's website says. "Male calves will leave their mothers and the herd from around 15 months and join bachelor herds of other young males. The female calves tend to stay with the same herd as their mothers but can leave after the age of around 18 months old, and most often stay in the same areas as the family herd they grew up in."

Newsweek has asked LADbible for comment.