The Primary Cause of Death for Giraffes and Other Giraffe Trivia

Photo by Ahmed Galal on Unsplash

If you've ever been to a major zoo, you've probably met a giraffe. They are certainly one of the most memorable animals in the animal kingdom, famous for their height as the tallest living land creature in the world.

There's probably a lot you don't know about giraffes. Did you know that in addition to being the tallest mammal, they are also the largest cud chewing mammal? The scientific word is "ruminant." That is, they have a stomach in the front part of their digestive system in which microbial fermentation takes place. Like cows, they regurgitate this mash and chew it and re-chew. This process of re-chewing is called rumination. It's a word we sometimes apply to our own mental processes in which we internally chew and re-chew an idea or thoughts and observations. During the pandemic year and the post-pandemic period we've probably all been doing a lot of ruminating.

The primary cause of death for giraffes is getting struck by lightning. Is anyone surprised? I suppose you could have guessed lions. Since giraffes only live to be about 25 years old in the wild, I would guess old age takes its share.

A Scientific American story says that when thunderstorms roll in, the giraffes actually compete with one another to see who can be the shortest. At Disney World, a giraffe was struck by lightning right in front of park visitors who were there. Sounds pretty traumatic to me.

Currently there are about 111,000 giraffes in the world. Not a whole lot, really, as their habitats are being continually encroached upon.

In reading about giraffes, I found their social habits to be interesting. I found this info on the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website:

Giraffe are highly social animals and live in herds of 15-20 female giraffe and some young males. Male calves will leave their mothers and the herd from around 15 months and join bachelor herds of other young males. The female calves tend to stay with the same herd as their mothers but can leave after the age of around 18 months old, and most often stay in the same areas as the family herd they grew up in.

Females are ready to mate from four years old and have a gestation period of 15 months – at birth, calves endure an incredible drop of 1.5m to the ground! Newborns weigh around 100kg and can be almost 2m tall at birth but their height will almost double within their first year. Newborns need to be so tall when they are born so they can reach up to suckle; they are reliant on their mother’s milk for the first 9-12 months of life but will start eating leaves from 4 months old.

This last part seems pretty dicey. To fall more than three feet when you are born... well, what a rude way to exit the womb. 

There is a mistake in the quoted paragraph above, probably an easy one to make when one makes assumptions. They called a group of giraffes a herd. More accurately they are called a tower. (Thank you to one of my astute readers.)

One last thing that I found especially interesting had to do with the patterns they are adorned with. There are no two giraffes alike because, like human fingerprints, their spots are different. I never knew that. 

Here's something cool that a friend sent me. It's a live cam from the
giraffe home at the Texas Safari Ranch. Sometimes they are all in 
and sometimes, such as at this moment, they are out in the sunshine.
Check back from time to time to see Annabelle, Baby Betty and JM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx3Dxqbd_6U

Meantime, enjoy your weekend. 
We'll see ya on the flipside.