Family in shock as giraffe plucks toddler out of car with its mouth during drive-thru safari

A family out at a safari park ended up getting quite the surprise when their toddler tried feeding a giraffe.

Sierra Robert and Jason Toten were at Fossil Rim Safari in Texas, US, along with their two-year-old daughter Paisley.

The parents tried to get their daughter to feed a giraffe from her hand, but the long-necked animal instead took a bite out of the toddler's t-shirt and tried to pick Paisley up.

Facing the prospect of the animal kingdom kidnapping their daughter, the two-year-old's parents were mightily relieved when the giraffe realised that little humans were not for eating and put the girl back down.

The girl had been feeding the giraffe when it accidentally bit her t-shirt and lifted her up. (Jam Press)

The giraffe dropped the girl back into her family's car and she was thankfully unharmed by the whole incident.

"My heart stopped," Jason told What's The Jam of the incident, which took place last Saturday (1 June).

"We went just to have a family day out of the house and Paisley and her mother were riding in the bed of the truck to feed the animals.

"When we got to the giraffe, they ate all the food we had and then went to take the bag of food and it accidentally grabbed Paisley’s shirt and picked her up."

The giraffe accidentally got the toddler's shirt instead of the bag of food. (Jam Press)

Fortunately, the toddler's dad has explained that the two-year-old wasn't fazed by being picked up by a giraffe, and if anything has only become more of a fan of the animals.

He said: "All Paisley wanted after that was a toy giraffe and giraffe T-shirt from the gift shop, so we got them for her and we will definitely be revisiting in the future!"

Jason said the family 'laughed about it' once it was all over and they realised that nobody had been hurt by any of this.

Fortunately, Paisley wasn't hurt and her family could see the funny side. She even asked for a giraffe toy afterwards. (Jam Press)

In other giraffe-related hijinks, people thought they spotted a giraffe in someone's garden in Wales on Google Maps.

In case you didn't know, giraffes are very definitely not native to the country, and people zooming on on the details of someone's garden were convinced that they nevertheless spotted it there.

While in this case it was a giraffe picking up a person, in the past humans have interfered quite a bit with giraffes.

Police in Kazakhstan once had to hunt down a man who hopped over a fence into a zoo in order to try and ride a giraffe.

Unsurprisingly, the giraffe shook the man off and chased him out of its enclosure.