The beautiful goodbye touching the internet's heart

The beautiful farewell of a giraffe with his handler dying of cancer has been caught on camera.

The man, only identified as Mario, was being wheeled into Rotterdam’s Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo when the giraffe approached and said its final goodbye.

“You could see him totally light up,” Kees Veldboer, founder and director of Ambulance Wish Foundation, told a Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad.

“It’s very special to see that those animals recognise him, and sense that he isn’t doing well,” he said.

Mario, 54, worked as a maintenance man for the zoo and had a mental disability.

The man also said goodbye to colleagues during the visit, the report said.