Giraffe
animal
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Scientific Name: Giraffa Camelopardalis
Do you think you know a lot about giraffes? Sure, there are the basic facts that anyone who made it through basic elementary science class know. Like, tallest land mammal and longest neck, but there is a whole world of fun facts about giraffes that most people never would have guessed. I've made it my mission today to make sure you leave this page feeling like a giraffe connoisseur.
1. Baby giants
Although it's common knowledge that giraffes are the tallest mammal in the world, most people don't know that new-born giraffes are taller than most humans.
2. Free fall
When giraffes are born, their mothers give birth standing up so the first thing a baby experiences in life is a six-foot drop to the earth!
3. Nobody puts baby in a corner
Don't be alarmed for their safety though, baby giraffes are resilient: In the womb they form horns on their head called Ossicones that help break the fall to the earth. They also stand up within a half hour of being born and can run alongside their mothers within several hours.
4. Daycare
Still on baby giraffes, they all hang out in "nursery groups" that are called creches until they are around five months old where they rest and play together while their mothers and the rest of their herd forages nearby.
5. We are family
There are nine different subspecies of giraffes, each of which are determined by the region in which they live, and also the way their coat pattern looks.
6. Unique in your own way
Speaking of coat patterns, a giraffe's pattern is very similar to a human's fingerprint or a snowflake: no two are alike!
7. So a camel and a leopard crossbred...what?
The scientific name for giraffes, Giraffa Camelopardalis, which means "one who walks quickly, a camel marked like a leopard". It was very quickly discovered that giraffes did not, in fact, come from a camel and a leopard mating! The name just so happened to stick!
8. Elephant trunks
A giraffe's tongue is around 20 inches long and is colored bluish-black to protect it from sunburn (that's how often a giraffe's tongue is outside of it's mouth-long enough to get sunburned). It is also used much like an elephant's trunk to grasp foliage and yank it into its mouth, it is very tough. They use their tongue for personal grooming also!
9. Got my heart racing
Giraffes are shaped so weird, therefore they must have a very specialized cardiovascular system to support its life. A giraffe's heart is two feet long and weighs about 25 pounds!
10. Supersized vertebrae
Since giraffes have the longest necks in the world, you would think they had the most neck vertebrae, right? Wrong! Giraffes have the same exact amount of neck vertebrae that a human has, seven. Each one of theirs just so happens to be around 10 inches long though.
11. Friendly companion
There is a bird, the Oxpecker, that rides around on giraffe's backs and eats the bugs off of them, helping them out in the long run!
12. Self-defense is key
You may think it would be easy for a lion or other predators to take out a giraffe, but that is not the case. Giraffes legs are extremely heavy and end in a very hard, very sharp 12 inch hooves. Giraffes can kick their legs in any direction with enough force to decapitate a fully grown lion. Most of the time predators avoid fully-grown giraffes unless they are desperate.
13. Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Giraffes don't normally fight. But they do like to play with one another. This is called "necking" where two male giraffes will hit necks in a play-fighting type manner for several minutes. This rarely results in injury to either giraffe!
14. Fast, or horrifyingly fast
When a giraffe is leisurely walking, it travels about 10 mph and goes about 15 feet each stride. When a giraffe is galloping at full speed? It is traveling about 35 mph! Don't worry though, because their necks are so long with such long windpipes, they run out of breath quickly when running full speed.
15. Giraffes help...NASA?
Giraffes have, surprisingly, contributed a huge amount to space travel with humans. One of NASA's biggest problems with space travel is how to deal with weightlessness and the effects it has on the human body. Blood flows very differently in space, so the circulatory system of the legs don't have to work so hard to pump blood back up to the heart; therefore, the veins get thin and weak which poses a major health problem once you are back on earth. Giraffes helped solve this problem. Since baby giraffes stand so soon after birth, that means their leg veins expand rapidly. NASA observed this and found out how it worked and were able to come up with the Lower Body Negative Pressure process. Basically it's a device that expands the leg veins in an astronaut's suit, keeping the leg veins in shape!
Now that you know I'm a crazy giraffe lady, maybe you can understand from these pretty cool facts why I think giraffes are so great! Hopefully they didn't drive you too crazy!
