The Incredible Giraffe

How Tall are They?

The Giraffe is the tallest of all living animals.

Males can be up to 18 feet tall.

(As tall as a 2 story building)

The female giraffe is up to 16 feet in height.

Did you know;

At birth, a newborn baby giraffe
is already 6 feet tall,
the height of a full grown man!

What does a giraffe look like?

The Giraffe is very tall and lanky.

They have very long legs, six feet long.



They have extremely long necks, also six feet long.
Though their necks only have 7 vertebrae,
(Each vertebrae can be over 10" long!)



Giraffes have two distinct, hair-covered horns called "ossicones" on top of their head.



The also have very lumpy heads, as they age they get calcium deposits that build up on their head, like the giraffe above.

The giraffe's feet can be as large as a dinner plate, twelve inches wide.

Their coat is spotted in a square pattern on most,
dark in the middle and lighter on the outer squares.

The Unique movement of the Giraffe.

When a giraffe walks it moves both right legs forward, then both left.



When they gallop, however, the giraffe simultaneously swings the hind legs ahead of and outside the front legs, reaching speeds of 35 miles an hour.

What does a giraffe eat?

The giraffe lives on the Savanna, in the Sahara. It is dry and the green vegetation is very high!

This suits the giraffe perfectly, they are herbavores, and eat a diet of around (75 lbs)
of leaves and twigs daily.

As ruminants, they first chew their food, swallow for processing and then visibly regurgitate the semi-digested cud up their necks and back into the mouth, in order to chew again.



Their favorite leaves are from the acacia tree. Acacia trees have long thorns that keep most animals from eating the leaves. But those thorns don't stop the giraffes! They simply use their 18-inch tongues, (yes you read that right, 18" tongues!) to reach around the thorns. Their tongues almost look bluish black in color, as you can see in the photo I took above.

Breeding

Giraffes are polygamous, a few older males in the herd will mate with all the females.

The female giraffe's gestation is around 14 months long.

Baby giraffes have a bit of a rude awakening as they "drop" into this world, literally dropped six feet onto their head.

The drink milk from their mothers, and start eating leaves around four months of age.

Mothers will often leave them with other young in the herd in a type of nursery while they forage for food.

Baby giraffes are most often the prey of lions and crocodiles.



Life expectancy

In the wild the giraffes life expectancy is twenty to twenty-five years.

In captivity it is around 28 years.

Sleep Deprived: Or just don't need it?


(Maybe this guy is taking a little nap while eating)

The giraffe has one of the shortest sleep requirements of any mammal, which is between 10 minutes and two hours in a 24-hour period, averaging 1.9 hours per day

Giraffe Behavior

Giraffes are Social Animals.

They are non-territorial.

They rarely fight, males will sometimes display a behavior called "necking", where they will hit necks aggressively, when the females are in heat. But they rarely injure each other, and displays do not last very long.


Giraffes can moo, hiss, roar, and whistle.

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