Set (deity) or a fennec fox. The animal has a curved snout, long rectangular ears, a thin forked tail and canine body, with sprouted fur tufts in an inverted arrow shape; sometimes, Set is depicted as a human with the distinctive head. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylised representation of the giraffe, owing to the large flat-topped "horns" which correspond to a giraffe's ossicones. The Egyptians themselves, however, made a distinction between the giraffe and the Set animal. During the Late Period, Set is depicted as a donkey or as having a donkey's head. The earliest representations of what
Nubian giraffe Nubian giraffe The Nubian giraffe ("Giraffa camelopardalis camelopardalis") is the nominate subspecies of giraffe. It is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan. It is currently extinct in the wild of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Eritrea. The Nubian giraffe used to be widespread everywhere on Northeast Africa. The subspecies was listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN in 2018. The IUCN currently recognizes only one species of giraffe with nine subspecies, one of which is the Nubian giraffe. The Nubian giraffe, along with the whole species, were first known by the binomen "Cervus camelopardalis" described