If look at a giraffe long enough, you'll start to suspect there's no way it can actually
exist.
With those long necks, spindly legs, and weird tongues, they look like they defy at least
a couple laws of biology and maybe even one or two from physics.
But they do exist, and it turns out there's more weird stuff going on with them than you
think.
Here are some crazy facts you didn't know about giraffes.
Giraffe lullaby
Giraffes sleep so little it was once believed they didn't even sleep at all.
In the 1990s, however, the University of Zurich spent 152 nights watching eight giraffes sleep
and discovered they get their Z's in bursts ranging from 35 minutes to as little as one
minute.
Usually they sleep standing, but sometimes they do lay down to get much needed REM sleep,
curling up in a position that makes them look extra cute.
So what do they do at night instead of sleeping?
Well, they hum.
But they do it at such a low frequency, many people can't even hear it.
The human hearing range runs from about 20 hertz up to 20,000 hertz, with a giraffe's
hum barely registering at frequencies as low as 35 hertz.
Researchers have no idea why giraffes hum or if the sound has any meaning.
But knowing that they do it sure is creepy!
Those crazy necks
You've probably wondered why giraffes have such insanely long necks.
And you're going to have to keep wondering, because nobody actually knows.
It was believed for a long time that giraffes evolved those huge necks so they could more
easily graze on treetops, but it turns out they actually prefer eating from lower shrubs,
which makes the neck a liability instead of a benefit.
Some scientists now think those necks evolved because male giraffes get in violent necking
fights to determine primacy, but that theory isn't widely believed either.
So for now, it's a big mystery.
One thing we know: it's not designed for urban travel.
But because their necks are so long, giraffes have had to evolve special circulatory systems.
The walls of their hearts are extra thick to deal with increased blood pressure, while
a giraffe's blood vessels can expand and contract, and also contain valves to make sure the blood
flows in the right direction even when they bend their huge necks.
And they need it: a human exposed to the same kind of pressure change would pass out.
Giraffes through history
Julius Caesar brought the very first giraffe to Europe in 46 BC, and according to contemporary
records, the creature was so mellow it was walked like a dog on a leash.
The Romans gave it the name camelopardalis, because they thought it looked like half camel,
half leopard.
The fate of Caesar's giraffe wasn't recorded, but by the second century AD, giraffes were
being killed for sport in the gladiator arenas, because those people were monster jerks.
Giraffes were treated a lot better in China after being brought to the country by an expedition
in the year 1413.
That's because the Chinese believed giraffes to be the mythical qilin, a beast said to
be part horse and part dragon, with one to three horns, a deer's body, an ox's tail,
cloven hooves, and a gentle nature.
So, y'know, they weren't wrong.
The emperor Yongle even kept a giraffe around to legitimize his shaky claim on the throne,
because having a legendary mythical beast in your entourage is always dope, right?
Giraffe sex
If you haven't spent much time thinking about giraffes having sex, well, we're about to
change that.
Unlike many animal species, giraffes don't have mating seasons.
Instead, female giraffes are potentially fertile all year long.
Male giraffes figure out whether or not their potential mate is fertile by tasting their
pee.
And if they can't find a mate?
No problem, as male giraffes have been noted for their high rate of same sex encounters.
Once a female giraffe does get pregnant, though, it's a real process, as the gestation period
can last up to 460 days.
And birth takes place standing up, so babies are just dropped from a height of six feet.
Pow!
Welcome to the world, kid!
One problem with giraffe sex, however, is that there are actually four subspecies of
giraffes, and they only interbreed while in captivity.
That's because weather differences put each species on a slightly different seasonal breeding
cycle, so they're just not horny at the same time.
That exclusivity has become an issue, as the giraffe population has declined by as much
as 40 percent over the last 30 years due to — you guessed it — people killing them.
It's estimated there are now fewer than 100,000 giraffes left in the wild, and the Rothschild's
giraffe is on the endangered species list with fewer than 700 left in the world.
The white giraffe
In 2015, Wild Nature Institute reported seeing a newborn giraffe in the Tarangire National
Park in Tanzania.
She wasn't an ordinary giraffe, though.
Thanks to a condition called leucism, her skin doesn't produce color but other parts
— like her eyes — still do.
Tour guides named her Omo, and s he's beaten some serious odds.
She'd had about a 50-50 chance of seeing her six-month birthday even as a regular, boring
old giraffe.
And her awesomely unique appearance made those chances even worse, since she became a target
for both human and animal predators.
So when she was seen again in 2016, people were pretty excited.
You go, little Omo!
We're all rooting for you.
Giraffes in SPACE
In the 1980s, NASA was having problems with astronauts returning from space, as the increased
gravity on Earth was pulling blood down to their lower extremities, leading to fainting
and dizziness.
Enter the giraffe!
According to Mental Floss, a physiologist named Alan Hargens realized baby giraffes
suffer through the same problems when they're born, and he and his colleagues studied their
blood vessels as inspiration for creating the Lower Body Negative Pressure Device.
NASA also studied the circulatory system of adult giraffes to design space suits that
could adapt better to different gravitational forces.
To boldly go where no giraffe has gone before...
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