A baby giraffe rejected by its first-time mother has now returned to the herd at Monarto Zoo after being hand-raised by keepers.
She is "healthy, strong and ready to mingle" with the rest of the giraffe herd at the open plains zoo, keeper Tess Stevens said.
The female calf was removed from its mother, Thula, three months ago after she responded to approaches for milk by kicking her baby and not allowing her to feed.
Staff were faced with the "crucial decision" of whether to intervene and remove the calf from the herd to hand-raise it "knowing full well if she continued to be neglected by mum, she wouldn't survive the night".
"After we retrieved her, we found she had a swollen eye and a disjointed neck that had a bit of a lean so we affectionately nicknamed her Eyelean," Ms Stevens said.
"It was a way to ease an incredibly stressful situation and the name has just stuck ever since.
"She will also be given an African-inspired name as well."
Over the past couple of weeks, zoo staff prepared Eyelean for integration into the waterhole habitat by teaching her to bottle-feed and eat leaves from the back of a ute.
