A giraffe which was struggling to chew her food has been given some dental work by a team of vets at a safari park.
Kelly, the 14-year-old giraffe, needed a general anaesthetic to allow experts to have a look inside her mouth to check her teeth.
It comes after keepers at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling noticed the animal was not digesting her food thoroughly and it was suspected she might have a problem with one of her molars.
A team of around 12 vets and staff worked on the animal in the section of the park she shares with four female giraffes.
She was constantly monitored throughout the 30-minute procedure, in which an X-ray of her mouth was also taken to explore if there were any further problems with her teeth.
Using a ladder and bales of straw to prop up her long neck, veterinary surgeon Ian Rodger was able to look in her mouth where he found food being caught in a gap.
He said: “I did expect to find some changes in the mouth. I actually found a wee bit less than what I was expecting but, that said, there could still be significant sources of pain and discomfort.
“Food was becoming trapped in the gap between the teeth. The right name for that is a diastema and there were two on the lower left jaw, and I picked and cleaned and flushed them out and explored the depth of them.”
