Giraffe facts

• Giraffes can weigh as much as a car
• They have the longest tail in the mammal world
• Although it is extremely long, a giraffe’s neck has the same number of vertebrae as a human’s
• Giraffes spend most of their time standing up: they even sleep and give birth standing up, and newborn giraffes can stand up in a matter of minutes
• These long-necked, gentle giants are smarter than previously thought, and enjoy hanging out together more than scientists initially believed, too

Giraffes – whose only close relation is the okapi, an animal resembling a cross between a zebra and a giraffe – have long been thought of as one species, split up into nine smaller subspecies depending on subtle differences in spot patterns.¹ This is how the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) still groups giraffes, too.²

But since the 2000s, researchers have been able to use detailed DNA and genetic data to parse these dissimilarities more accurately. Results suggest there are various separate species of giraffe, but the jury is out on exactly how many: some experts think there are six species, while others believe there are eight, depending on how information is examined.³ Most scientists now think there are probably four – the northern giraffe, the southern giraffe, the Masai giraffe, and the reticulated giraffe.⁴ The business of classification can be a little complicated.

Giraffes in the wild are only found in Africa. They are sparsely distributed across 21 countries, from Nigeria in the west, to Ethiopia in the east, and down to Namibia and South Africa – the latter being home to the most giraffes in the continent.⁵ Over the past 4,000 years, giraffes have disappeared from the north of Africa, including in Egypt and Morocco.⁶ Today, the remaining populations roam semi-desert areas, dry savannahs and open grasslands, grazing on a sparse number of trees, bushes, and shrubs for food.

About 70% of giraffe populations live in areas that aren’t protected by conservation efforts.⁷

Their iconic spotted coat is one of the key features which make giraffes so recognisable, made up of a tan background with splashes of chestnut. So much so, that when giraffes were first discovered, taxonomists gave them the moniker Giraffa camelopardalis because they thought they looked like flute-legged camels marked like leopards.⁸

The markings are much like human fingerprints; every giraffe has a look unique to him or her.⁹ Different species and subspecies have slightly different markings: one Masai giraffe subspecies has really dark, jagged, leaf-like spots, while reticulated giraffes look like they’re covered in an orange-brown colour with a net of sharp white lines overlaid.¹⁰

This pattern is good camouflage for the beige, warm-coloured environments that giraffes inhabit.¹¹ The blotches are also helpful for keeping giraffes cool in the arid heat of Africa, because the parts of their bodies with darker fur have extra tiny capillaries to release their warmth.

Giraffes are the tallest mammals walking the Earth today, growing up to 5.5m tall. The tallest giraffe ever recorded was George, a male Masai giraffe living at Chester Zoo in the UK.¹² These giants owe their height to their spindly 1.8m-long legs and their prolonged nape, which measures an average of 1.8m.¹³ Whilst they’re smaller when they’re just born, it only takes about four years for giraffes to reach their full height.¹⁴

Towering over the vast, barren savannah comes with lots of perks: giraffes can reach luscious leaves at the top of trees which nobody else can get to, and their height gives them a helpful perspective when looking out for any threats or predators.¹⁵ Still, being so tall does make it hard to reach the ground with their mouths. In order to access rivers and ponds to drink water, giraffes have to open up their legs as if doing the splits, balancing precariously and becoming vulnerable to risks presented by the savannah.¹⁶

Male giraffes weigh up to 1,900kg, the weight of a car, and their tail can reach up to more than a metre in length, longer than any other mammal.¹⁷

An adult giraffe has a neck of about 1.8m in length, which is longer than the whole body of an average human being.¹⁸ But the neck of a giraffe still only has seven vertebrae bones, just like us (and almost all other mammals) – they’re just really elongated vertebrae.

Having such a long neck comes in handy for reaching leaves at the top of trees, which is what giraffes most love to snack on. But some researchers think that male giraffes might have also evolved long, strong necks to gain an advantage when fighting off other males and showing what good mates they can be.¹⁹

The chunky bumps on top of a giraffe’s head are neither horns nor antlers: they’re called ossicones.²⁰ These are hard knobs of cartilage which fuse into their skull and become protruding bones as the giraffe grows older. Both males and females have them, and they’re covered in skin and fluffy fur.²¹

Females sometimes use their ossicones to fend off predators and head-butt them away. Males, known as bulls, use them in duels with other giraffes, as they sometimes fight each other. They literally go head-to-head in a head-butting battle called ‘necking’. To protect their heads from the effects of fighting, some males grow lumps of calcium on their skulls, too.²²

Giraffes truly are animals to look up to – because they spend most of their lives standing up. Once born, they literally hit the ground running: it only takes them about half an hour to be able to stand up and walk around.²³

They can also rest and sleep while still standing up, especially out in the wild. But their sleep is not like a human’s deep sleep: giraffes usually only have a few quick two-minute naps every once in a while, and about 30 minutes of sleep at night, amounting to five and a half hours in a day. This is called shallow sleep: their eyes are half open, and their ears are twitching.²⁴

Most of this sleeping time is spent standing up, but this can vary. An experiment on Angolan giraffes in the wild suggested that giraffes might take turns lying down, resting for entire hours while others in the herd stay vigilant.²⁵ A different experiment on zoo-dwelling giraffes suggested that these giraffes crouch down to sleep only 4.7% of the time.²⁶

Giraffes stand up so much that they even give birth whilst on all fours. Females can mate when they become five or six years old and until the age of about 24.²⁷ Once they’ve mated successfully, they’re pregnant for 15 months.

Baby giraffes, called calves, are delivered from their mother while she’s standing up. The legs come out first, then the head, and then the calf falls straight onto the floor with a thud, which snaps their umbilical cord.²⁸ They’re already about 2m tall and weigh around 100kg when they’re born and they will lie around for a couple of minutes before attempting to stand up.²⁹

For the first week, the mother and baby hang out on their own before joining the rest of the herd. Then, the young giraffes are grouped with other young ones from their crew – like a small giraffe nursery. For the first year, baby giraffes still mainly drink their mother's milk and are slowly introduced to snacking on vegetation.³⁰

Unfortunately, many of the features that make giraffes so good at eluding predators – being tall, strong, and being able to see them from afar – aren’t skills that juveniles have developed yet. Being a baby giraffe is hard, and more than half of all giraffe calves don’t make it past a year of age, as animals such as lions, hyenas, crocodiles and leopards ferociously hunt them.³¹

Despite giraffes being so big they could warrant having two hearts, this is actually a myth. Giraffes just have one large heart, which weighs about 11kg and can pump 60 litres of blood every minute.³²

What makes giraffe hearts so exceptional is that they have thicker muscle on the left ventricle, so they can pump blood with enough power to send it shooting up the animal’s long neck.³³ This powerful push means their blood pressure is twice that of humans. But giraffes don’t face the same threats from high blood pressure that humans would, thanks to special genes that help maintain their health.³⁴

For example, a giraffe’s jugular veins – the ones in its neck – have highly elasticated walls which allow them to keep the blood flow going in the right direction at all times, even when a giraffe is bowing its head low.³⁵

Giraffes are herbivores: they only eat plants. They spend most of their waking life eating, consuming more than 30kg of vegetation each day.³⁶ They also get most of their hydration from the plants they’re gorging on, only stopping to drink a couple of times a week. Their height and long neck allow them the luxury of grazing on tall trees without any competition, reaching to gnaw on the juicy top leaves and buds of their favourite tree, the acacia.

Once they’ve secured a delicious green meal, giraffes chew on it, swallow it, and then regurgitate a ball of chewed vegetation called cud. Then they spit it out and chew it all over again to better digest it.³⁷ Cows do the same, and this process is called rumination. It’s also why giraffes have four compartments in their stomachs.³⁸

Giraffes spend a large amount of their time with their faces in treetops. This might also potentially help acacia trees with pollination as the giraffe moves acacia pollen from plant to plant as it wanders around.³⁹

Although they don’t eat other animals, giraffes can sometimes be spotted gnawing away at bones.⁴⁰ They don’t kill, but they do chew away at bits of carcasses because the calcium and phosphorus in bones supplement their leafy diet.⁴¹

A giraffe’s tongue is crucial for treetop browsing, too.⁴² It is thick and resistant so it can clasp spiky, thorny bits of plant. It measures up to half a metre long and is prehensile, so it can reach, roll up and twist off tasty leaves and twigs with dexterity.⁴³ It’s so long that giraffes can pick their nose with it. Plus, it’s tinted dark colours such as blue, purple or black, so it doesn’t get sunburned while hanging out of the giraffe’s mouth for most of the day.

Although their long, spindly legs might not look a good fit for sprinting, these hooved mammals are pretty good runners: they can sprint as fast as 60km/h and run at length at about 40km/h.⁴⁴ Unlike horses, giraffes run by ‘pacing’, moving both right legs and then both left legs at the same time, like camels and elephants.⁴⁵

There’s an ongoing debate about whether giraffes can swim, too. Hypothetically, being so large, tall and gangly would make it hard to swim effectively. But mathematical calculations suggest that an adult giraffe would indeed, theoretically, find itself able to float in 2.8m of water.⁴⁶ This would be quite uncomfortable though, which might be why giraffes have probably never tried.

Giraffes have very small brains compared to their body size and compared to what’s typically expected of a mammal’s brain.⁴⁷ Still, researchers are starting to think that brain size might not always indicate intelligence.⁴⁸

And while giraffe intelligence hasn’t been widely researched, these long-necked animals could score highly when it comes to making informed decisions.⁴⁹ Giraffes can discriminate between numerical quantities – which is basically animal counting – and they can use statistics to figure out where to find food.⁵⁰

Scientists initially thought that giraffes were socially aloof and didn’t form long-lasting bonds, but a growing body of research is starting to suggest otherwise.⁵¹

Giraffes freely roam around in groups of 10 to 20 called ‘towers’, and while herds grow and split and merge again, they have sophisticated relationships within the group, especially among females.⁵²

Giraffe herds are often made up of up to three generations, and mothers and calves can stick together for up to 15 years.⁵³ They like to hang out with other mother-children pairs in the group: mothers chip in to care for other children who aren’t their own and grieve if something happens to any of them.⁵⁴ Childless female giraffes act as sort of nannies for the group.⁵⁵ In fact, giraffes may also be subject to something called the ‘grandmother effect’.⁵⁶ They spend more than 30% of their life in menopause, not being able to reproduce, and helping out with caring for the children of their relatives to ensure the success of their family and genes.

Giraffes also love to have lunch with their friends – they are often found eating with the same fellow giraffe.⁵⁷

Towering over the savannah, giraffes don’t have many predators other than humans and lions.⁵⁸ A giraffe will usually fend off any attack with head-butting and some formidable, not to mention lethal, karate-style kicks from any of its four legs. 

Still, it’s not so much predators that threaten giraffe populations, but poaching and habitat destruction.⁵⁹

Giraffes have already become extinct in seven countries in Africa, and their numbers are plummeting, in what has been described as a silent extinction.⁶⁰ Their numbers have plunged about 40% in the last three decades, with only around 90,000 specimens probably left in the wild.⁶¹

Whether giraffes are seen as endangered or not still heavily relies on the debate about how many giraffe species there are in the first place. The IUCN – which groups all giraffes under one species, G. Camelopardalis – labels all giraffes as ‘Vulnerable’, and notes that one of the nine subspecies is ‘Least Concern’, one is ‘Near Threatened’, two are ‘Vulnerable’, one is ‘Endangered’ and two are ‘Critically Endangered.'⁶²

Featured image © Vladimir Turkenich | Shutterstock

Fun fact image © prabhasnaps | Instagram

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