Severely injured giraffe with 'very twisted' zigzag neck spotted in South Africa

A young giraffe with a zigzagging, seemingly broken neck has recently been spotted for the first time in South Africa. Almost nothing is known about this deformed animal, including how it got its extreme injury or how long it might survive.

Travel blogger Lynn Scott snapped photos of the giraffe on a wildlife tour in an unnamed, private Game reserve in Kruger National Park, and shared the images July 5 on Facebook. (The exact location and date have been withheld by Scott to protect the animal from poachers.)

"It was standing still at the time" and showed "very little movement," Scott, who worked at the reserve at the time, told Live Science in an email. However, the ranger leading the tour was "not too concerned" with its lack of mobility, she added.

Social media commenters suggested that the giraffe had a broken neck. However, experts say there is not enough evidence to support this hypothesis.

"It is definitely a very twisted neck," said Sara Ferguson, a veterinarian and conservation health coordinator at the non-governmental organization Giraffe Conservation Foundation. However, "without radiographs to prove the bone has been broken, we would refer to the giraffe as having severe torticollis," Ferguson told Live Science in an email.

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Torticollis, also known as wryneck, is a condition that in humans "causes the head to rotate and tilt at an odd angle," according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. This can either occur from birth or be acquired later in life through a number of possible causes, including sleeping in the wrong position, herniated discs, muscle shrinkage and spinal cord infections.