Giraffe’s Stiff Long Neck has just 7 Vertebrae!

12/14/2024

Giraffes love humans, yes, giraffes are friendly. These creatures tend to have gentle personalities and aren't a species that would actively attack a human being. Giraffes are the world's tallest mammals and are not usually aggressive. The females can however be aggressive while protecting their calf.

Giraffes have aroused man's curiosity since the earliest times. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed that giraffes were a mixture of the leopard and the camel, and they called the giraffe "a camelopard."

The giraffe is the tallest of all living animals, but scientists cannot explain how it got its long neck. A famous French zoologist, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, had a theory that at one time the giraffe's neck was much shorter than it now is. He thought that the neck grew to its present length because of the animal's habit of reaching for the tender leaves in the upper branches of trees. But scientists in general don't accept de Lamarck's theory.

Strangely enough, the body of a giraffe is no larger than that of the average horse. Its tremendous height, which may reach 6 meters, comes mostly from its legs and neck. The neck of a giraffe has only seven vertebrae, which is what the human neck has. But each vertebra is extremely long. Because of this, a giraffe always has a stiff neck. If it wants to take a drink from the ground, it has to spread its legs far apart to be able to reach down!

The strange shape and build of the giraffe is perfectly suited to enable it to obtain its food. A giraffe eats only plants, so its great height enables it to reach the leaves on trees which grow in the African savanna where there is little grass.

A giraffe's tongue is often eighteen inches long, and it can use it so skillfully that it can pick the smallest leaves off thorny plants without being pricked. It also has a long upper lip which helps it pull off many leaves at a time.

The giraffe can protect itself from danger in many ways. First, the colouring of its hide makes it practically invisible when it is feeding in the shadows of trees. It has well-developed ears which are sensitive to the faintest sounds, and it has keen senses of smell and sight. Finally, a giraffe can gallop at more than 30 miles an hour when pursued and can outrun the fastest horse!

When attacked, a giraffe can put up a good fight by kicking out with its hind legs or using its head like a sledge hammer. Even a lion is careful in attacking a giraffe, always approaching it from behind!

Mother giraffes reject their babies, in this case, natural selection might favour the mother that selectively abandons or culls the weakest or youngest of her children to ensure that she can adequately provide for the rest.

The giraffes give birth while standing. Newborn giraffes enter the world in a sort of 'superman' position: front legs and headfirst, followed by their body, and then back legs. Because of the extreme size of their offspring, giraffe mums give birth standing up to not damage their babies' lengthy necks.

The giraffe is unusual in never investigating urine on the ground. What does it mean?

The statement means that giraffes exhibit unique behaviour compared to many other animals when it comes to investigating urine. Most animals use urine as a source of information—sniffing it to identify territory, mating readiness, health, or identity of other animals. However, giraffes do not investigate urine that has been deposited on the ground.

Instead, giraffes engage in different behaviours: they test urine directly from the source by prompting other giraffes to urinate and then sniffing or tasting it. This is particularly observed in male giraffes during the process of assessing a female's reproductive status. The male uses a behaviour called flehmen response, curling back its lips to analyze the pheromones in the urine to determine if the female is in estrus and ready to mate.

Thus, the statement highlights how giraffes differ from many other species in their approach to using chemical cues for communication and reproduction.

The male gathers the urine in his mouth with his tongue and then frequently performs flehmen to assess her oestrous status. Estrous is a recurring period of sexual receptivity and fertility.

Male giraffes will headbutt females in the bladder until they pee. They then drink the urine, tasting it to determine whether the female is ovulating.

Male giraffes practice “neck sparring,” violently swinging their necks into each other to assert dominance, so the hypothesis formed that males with longer necks may have been more reproductively successful. But, more recently, biologists have proposed that neck length may instead be driven by females' foraging behaviour.

To find which of them are willing to mate, the males smell their urine. If things look promising, the male follows the female around until she stands still, indicating that the time is right. Finally, the male mounts the female from the rear and copulates with her.

Giraffe gestation, or length of pregnancy, isn't an exact science. Giraffe pregnancies typically range between 14 and 16 months, which can make planning for the birth a bit of a guessing game.

Many young giraffes, called calves, die from lion attacks during their first year of life. Once a giraffe reaches adulthood its height is often enough to protect it from lions. Adult giraffes, however, must still be careful of lions when they are bending down to drink water or rest. Usually, giraffes drink or rest in shifts so that at least one giraffe is always on the lookout for approaching predators.

A strange question arises as to why the female giraffe kicks off the newborn soon after birth.

The answer seems that the mother giraffe knows that lions and leopards love giraffe meat. So, unless the baby giraffe quickly learns to stand and run with the pack – it will have no chance of survival.