RETICULATED GIRAFFE
(Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata)
Swahili: TWIGA
Tallest animal with long neck and sloping hindquarters. Males reach 18 feet or more, and females around 16 feet. Length of neck is only matched by that of its legs. Front legs appear longer than hind legs because their backbone angles down toward the rump but all 4 legs are about the same size.
Neck is fringed with thick mane and both sexes have 3 bony protuberances or horns, actually bumps of cartilage covered with skin and hair, above the eyes. Muscular 17-inch, purplish tongue serves as a plucking organ for gathering foliage in to large elastic lips and mouth.
Reticulated giraffe, one of at least 9 different coat patterns or subspecies, is recognized by its latticework of large chestnut or orange blotches edged with bright white lines.
Ecology and Behavior |
Folklore |
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Distribution: Formerly widespread throughout drier savannahs of Africa, including Sahara over 7,000 years ago during wetter conditions. Reticulated subspecies restricted to northern Kenya and Somalia.
Habitat: Savannahs, open woodlands and seasonal floodplains. Commonest in savannah areas of scattered low and medium-height woody growth.
Food and Feeding Methods: Feed from over 100 species but acacia, commiphora and terminalia trees are major staples. Flexible upper lip and long tongue allow them to strip leaves between sharp thorns. Widely dispersed during wet season when green deciduous growth is abundant. Concentrated in core areas during dry season when evergreens survive. Selection of high-quality foliage with concentrated nutritional value and super-efficient digestive system allows them to eat less than half the daily intake of most grazers, about 75 pounds per day. As ruminants with four-chambered stomachs, they chew their cud.
Social Behavior: Gregarious, loose open herds, non-territorial. All social units are temporary. Adult males may be slightly territorial in that mature bulls monopolize all mating and tend to be intolerant of other males at cores of variably sized home ranges. Females have more unstable home ranges that change from year to year and overlap with those of many other females with which they associate in temporary mixed sex groups up to 50. Only stable association of female giraffe is yearlong period of motherhood and traditional, highly localized calving area to which she returns again and again to give birth. Mothers with small calves are most likely to associate as tendency of calves to cluster in crèches anchors mothers to same location. At puberty (3 years) males associate in bachelor groups for 3 to 4 years before becoming more solitary.
Necking, a unique shoulder-leaning mode of fighting in which males stand nose to nose or nose to tail and swing their necks at each other, striking body blows with their heads, is common among young males in establishing hierarchy within the group. Most of the time, these slow-motion contests of strength are merely sparring matches among young males but real fights for dominance can result in broken necks and jaws. Mature bulls know place in hierarchy and usually avoid confrontation. As males mature, they become more residential and solitary, feeding alone and monitoring reproductive status of females in their ranges.
Giraffes have vocal cords but rarely use them. Though normally silent, they give alarm snorts, moan, snore and hiss. Calves bleat and cows seeking calves may give a roaring bellow. Their extraordinary height allows them communicate mostly with their eyes.
Reproduction: Mating peaks in the wet season. After a gestation of 14 to 15 months, females give birth standing up, dropping calves headfirst about 6 feet to the ground. Newborn calves, nearly 6 feet tall and 150 pounds, rise to feet within 15 minutes and begin nursing within an hour. After a week or two in isolation, they may join up to 9 other very young calves born in vicinity. At least 1 mother is often nearby, but females tend to leave ‘creche’ of young on their own during the middle of the day while they feed and when predators are most inactive. Young remain close to crèche for 3 to 4 months, after which they begin accompanying their mothers for longer periods of time. By 6 months, calves are moving independently with adults, weaned at 1 year and independent at 12 to 16 months. Mother-calf bond is strong, lasting up to 22 months. Only about a quarter of calves survive first year from predation due to their fearlessness and independence. Females first conceive at 4 years and males first breed at about 7 years. Can live up to almost 30 years.
Status: Restricted to protected areas and a few sparsely populated regions. Range continues to contract due to poor land use by livestock farmers and pastoralists. Not threatened as a species, but local populations are vulnerable in many localities: reticulated is one of most endangered subspecies.
Adaptations: Giraffe’s neck length evolved with elongation of the vertebrae not by adding more. A giraffe’s neck contains 7 vertebrae, the same number for a human, and they are ridged and grooved to hold thick neck muscles. A special joint enables giraffe to raise its head vertically in line with the neck. Because its neck is too short to reach the ground, a giraffe has to spread its legs or kneel down on padded ‘knees’ to drink.
Elastic walls of blood vessels force blood upward to the brain and swell to absorb excess blood when the head is lowered. Jugular veins also have valves that prevent backflow of blood to the brain when head is lowered. Arteries near feet, which are thicker and less elastic, decrease downward blood pressure and keep feet from swelling.
The giraffe’s tight-fitting skin acts like a pressurized spacesuit.
Pumping of massive heart—2 feet long and 25 pounds—keeps blood flow constant. Heart beats up to 170 times per minute. Giraffe has highest blood pressure of any mammal: up to 280/180.
Exceptionally fast growth (double in height in first year) is an anti-predator strategy.
Giraffes move both right legs at once, then both left when ambling at a slow pace, creating a rocking motion. Gallop that looks like a slow-motion lope covers ground at rate of up to 37 mph.
Head/Body Length: 11 ½ - 15 ¾ ft.
Tail Length: 2 ½ - 3 ½ ft.
Total Height: 13 - 18 ft. (male) 11 ½ - 16 ft. (female)
Weight: 3,975 - 4,265 lbs. (male) 1,000 - 2,600 lbs. (female)
Out on the safaris I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the Giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness, as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long-stemmed, speckled gigantic flowers slowly advancing.
- Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa, 1937
Variations on a Name
The word ‘giraffe’ comes from the Arabic zarafa, which means ‘one who walks swiftly’ but also derives from a source meaning ‘assemblage’, as in assemblage of animals.
The Greeks described the giraffe as a camel’s body wearing a leopard’s spotted coat and gave it the scientific species name camelopardalis.
The Egyptian hieroglyph for giraffe means ‘to prophesy or foretell’, which probably comes from its keen eyesight.
The Persians called the giraffe ushtur gaw palank: ushtur meaning ‘camel’, gaw meaning ‘cow’ and palank meaning ‘hyena’.
Curious Descriptions
Humans probably first encountered giraffes about 5,000 years ago and painted and carved them on their caves. Large and naturalistic renditions indicated the prominence of giraffes in the lives of prehistoric man.
People who didn’t live with giraffes were baffled by their shape. Most people who wrote about them or drew them had never seen one. Until the giraffe was actually observed in its wild habitat in the middle of the 18th century, many people didn’t believe it existed, and came up with crazy explanations for its lineage and inaccurate, distorted images of its appearance.
The giraffe is produced by the camel mare, the male hyena, and the wild cow. Its head is shaped like that of a stag, its horns like that of cattle, its legs like those of a nine-year-old camel, its hoof like those of cattle, its tail like that of a gazelle; its neck is very long, its hands are long and its feet are short.
Zakariya al-Qazwini, author of a Persian bestiary, 1203-83
The Giraffe is almost like the ostrich, save that its chest has no feathers but has a very white fine wool, and a horse’s tail…it has a horse’s feet and bird’s legs…and the head is like a horse’s…
Simone Signoli, Florentine traveler, 1384
The head thereof is like to a Camel’s, the neck to a Horses, the body to a Harts; and his cloven hoof is the same with a Camels…his tongue is neer three feet long, and with that he will so speedily gather in his meat…and his neck diversly coloured, is fifteen feet long.
Edward Topsell, The Historie of Four-footed Beasts, 1607
A common misconception was that the hind legs were shorter than the fore legs, resulting in its sloping back. Actually the front and back legs are almost the same length.
Their hinder parts are so much lower than their front parts that they appear to be seated on their tail parts.
Strabo, Greek geographer
The enormous disproportion of his legs, of which those before are double the length of those behind, prevents him from exercising his powers.
Buffon, 1781
Famous Giraffes
People have long been captivated by the giraffe’s gentle, friendly and curious nature.
When the sultan of Egypt gave Lorenzo de’ Medici a giraffe in 1487, it became a celebrity in Florence. The giraffe entranced the people of Florence when it took its daily walks through the city and accepted fruit from children or poked its head into second-story windows looking for apples. Lorenzo’s giraffe became the subject of many paintings and songs and was considered the ‘most popular character in Florence’.
In 1826 Egypt gave King Charles X a young giraffe to gain favor with the French government. After the giraffe traveled to Marseilles by ship, a decision was made to walk her to Paris. It took over a month to cover the 500 or so miles, walking at a leisurely pace of about 15 miles per day. The caravan included a police escort, milk cows to provide milk for the giraffe, a famous French naturalist and other local dignitaries, and a house-drawn carriage loaded with baggage and cages of other animals for the king. The French had a waterproof raincoat made of canvas that the giraffe wore whenever it rained. Crowds lined the entire route but the giraffe seemed totally at ease with all the adulation and commotion.
1827, the year the giraffe arrived in Paris, became ‘the year of the giraffe’. She was walked through the streets of Paris every afternoon for a 2-hour viewing by the public, who couldn’t get enough of her. The giraffe’s image was everywhere, from plates and wineglasses to women’s handbags. When Charles X was overthrown, the public lost interest in the giraffe that was so closely linked to the disgraced king. She died in obscurity at about 21 years of age.
…to travel through the chill of an African dawn, and see the graceful outline of a herd of giraffes moving across the savanna, gives one a feeling of the world when it was new—when prehistoric beasts populated it.
Bradley Smith, 1972