As the sun sets on the African savanna, most of the animals get settled in for the evening.
Among these magnificent creatures is the noble giraffe who may sneak some more bites of
leaves from the topmost branches of the Acacia tree before resting for a bit of sleep.
It's no secret that giraffes are tall. Everything about a giraffe is huge, even from the time it is born.
Newborn giraffes are already six feet tall and weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds.
When they are fully grown, male giraffes are larger at about 2,600 pounds, while females may weigh around 1,500 pounds.
Adult giraffes are about 16 to 18 feet tall, making them the tallest mammal in the world.
For a giraffe, the gestation period (or the time it takes for a baby to grow inside the mother) is 14 to 15 months.
Once the giraffe is born it has quite a demanding start to life.
After surviving a six-foot fall from it's mother's birth canal, the giraffe must be up on it's feet and walking within an hour.
Oddly, a mother giraffe will even kick her new baby to get it up and walking.
While this may seem unkind, the loving and intelligent mother knows that giraffe calves will quickly
become easy prey if the baby doesn't learn to pick itself up and walk.
Giraffe mothers need a chance for themselves to eat and drink and it is often during this time that predators, like
lions, could do the most damage to newborns.
To help protect the young, mother giraffes will take turns watching a group of babies,
called a creche, so that all the mothers have a chance to get away to eat and drink.
While giraffe mothers diligently work hard to protect the little ones from predators
less than one-half of all giraffe calves reach adulthood.
There comes a time in a giraffe's life when it must defend itself and can you guess where their most powerful defense lies?
In it's powerful legs! One kick is strong enough to kill a lion, so lions will usually leave adult giraffes alone.
An adult giraffes legs are around 6 feet long. While they may seem too skinny to support the weight
of the huge giraffe, the leg strength comes from tight, tough ligaments that hold it's bones together.
Another way a giraffe will also defend itself is by swinging it's head on it's long neck and using
it's ossicones to strike. Often times male giraffes will use their long necks and ossicones to fight
for dominance. The neck alone on a giraffe can grow to be about 6 feet in length. It's interesting to
note that a giraffe's neck has the same amount of bones or vertebrae as a human or even a
mouse. Almost all mammals have seven neck vertebrae, including the giraffe. A giraffe's vertebrae are
just significantly longer at around 10 inches each.
Giraffes are social animals and live in herds in the African savannas or woodlands.
Savannas are grassy plains dotted with trees, usually Acacia trees.
Giraffes share this habitat with other animals, such as zebras, Cape buffalo, antelope, lions, cheetahs, and wild dogs.
Think about some of your favorite foods.
A giraffe's food of choice is the leaves, fruits, and flowers of the Acacia tree, as well as other plants.
Since no other animals can reach the leaves in the upper levels of these trees,
giraffes have no competition for food which is nice for them.
Some giraffes eat about 75 pounds of food per day, though it may be more
or less depending on habitat and population. If leaves are not available, giraffes can reach the
ground and eat grasses and other plants. It looks kind of funny when a giraffe bends down to drink
water out of rivers or other sources, because it has to stretch out it's legs to bring it's head
to the ground, but it only has to get a drink every few days.
For a long time, people thought giraffes did not produce sounds because they do not have vocal cords but this is actually not true.
They do have voice boxes but giraffes are quiet and mostly make little snorts, moos, and grunts.
Scientists discovered that giraffes will hum, but only at night.
It is also believed that giraffes produce infrasound, which are sounds that we as humans cannot hear,
because their vocal vibrations are too low in frequency.
Do you know how much sleep you get at night?
The amount of sleep recommended for humans depends on our age but on average a school-age child
like yourself may get anywhere from 8 to 12 hours of sleep.
In contrast, giraffes sleep for much less time.
The amount of time they sleep can depend on certain factors, like if they are living in the wild or in a zoo.
A zoo giraffe may sleep for about 4 hours, though they may really only need about 5 to 30 minutes a day.
In fact, they sleep so little that researchers once thought they never slept at all.
When they do sleep, it's often in short bursts all throughout the day and they sleep standing up
unless they are young or sick. As herbivorous prey, staying awake for most of the day helps giraffes
stay safe from predators.
Our final feature of the giraffe is pretty peculiar. Their tongues are blue!
While in animal science we say blue, they actually appear to be a dark gray. These strong tongues are
about 18 inches long and are perfect for stripping the leaves off of thorny Acacia branches without
injuring their faces. The tongues are so thick and tough that the thorns don't hurt them.
Scientists think their tongues being blue act as a form of sunscreen,
since the tongue is exposed to the sun for much of the day as a giraffe eats.
Giraffes are incredible mammals. Their height, their diets,
their beautifully spotted fur coats, and other features may seem so different from us but we
can appreciate their differences in seeing how these features were perfectly designed by God.