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The giraffe is the world’s tallest land mammal. Its long neck lets it feed on vegetation that other herbivores cannot reach. Like human fingerprints, the markings of a giraffe’s coat are unique to each individual. When groups are gathered, the patterns act as disruptive camouflage, confusing potential predators. The giraffe’s sharp vision and towering height help it to anticipate attack from predators.
Habits: Giraffes are sociable by nature. They live in groups but do not form permanent herds. Bulls (adult males) have an identifiable pecking order, which is established through the ritual of neck wrestling. A strange bull entering an area will be challenged by the dominant male. They will proceed to butt heads (their skulls are particularly strong) until one of them retreats.
Food and hunting: The giraffe browses for its food, which consists of the leaves and shoots of trees and shrubs. Thorny acacia trees pose little problem for the giraffe; the giraffe picks off individual shoots and bunches of leaves from between the thorns with it tongue, which can be up to 18 inches long. Plants without thorns are stripped of their leaves as the giraffe pulls the whole length of smaller branches through its teeth. The male and female feed from different parts of a tree. The female forages among the lower branches while the male feeds from the higher branches. This behavior ensures that the sexes do not have to compete for the same food within their range.
Breeding: When a giraffe cow (or female) is ready to mate, she attracts all the mature bulls in the area. The dominant bull wins her by driving off all the other males. The young are born fifteen months later at a calving ground where they remain for the early part of their lives. The same calving grounds are used time after time by many females. That way, when the mothers go off to feed during the day, the calves are left to protect one another. Even so, half of the calves die in the first 6 months from attacks by hyenas, leopards, and wild dogs. As the calf grows older, it begins to roam with its mother. Its main predator is the lion. After calves are a year old, their mortality rate drops below 10 percent. While the mother will mate 5 months after giving birth, her calf is not weaned until it is 15 months old. Young females stay in their mothers’ home ranges, but young males wander away at about 3 years old.
Giraffe and Man: Many different African tribes have traditions of hunting giraffes for food. The bushmen of Botswana hunt them on foot, running up behind the giraffes to cut the tendons of their back legs before spearing them to death. Tribes in Sudan, Chad, and Ethiopia hunt them on horseback. Giraffes are also sometimes killed for the hair in their tails; the natives braid and use it to make bracelets to sell to tourists. This practice has given rise to poaching in some parts of Africa.
Key Facts: Sizes, Breeding, Lifestyle, and
Related Species:
Sizes:
Height including horns: Male 15-17 ft.
Female, 12-15 ft.
Weight: Male, 1765-4255 lb. Female, 1,215-2,600
lb.
Breeding:
Sexual maturity: Female, 4-5 years. Male,
3 ½ years
Mating: Anytime
Gestation: 453-464 days
No. of young: Usually one calf
Lifestyle:
Habit: Loosely bound groups
Lifespan: 5 years in the wild
Diet: Leaves from trees, shrubs, climbers,
vines, and some herbs
Related species: Nine subspecies recognized;
all similar but distinguished by coat pattern and geographical distribution.
Distribution: Africa, south of the Sahara
Desert, in open woodland and wooded grassland.
Conservation: Common in eastern and southern
Africa; reduced in some western parts of Africa by poachers, but not in
immediate danger. In Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, numbers are increasing
at over 5 percent per year.
Features of the Giraffe: When it drinks, the giraffe spreads its front legs far apart in order to lower its head to the water. The giraffe has extremely elastic blood vessels and special valves in the veins of its neck to control the rush of blood to its head. Without this adaptation, the increase in blood pressure would cause the giraffe to lose consciousness. A giraffe’s horns gradually turn from gristle to bone. No two giraffe coat patterns are the same.
Did You Know:
A giraffe’s long neck has the same number of
vertebrae – seven – as most other mammals have. But the giraffes’ are greatly
elongated.
A giraffe is one of the few animals born with
horns. A baby giraffe’s horns lie flat against the skull when it is born
and pop upright during the first week of life.
Giraffe cows feed for more than half of every
24 hours; bulls, for much less.