Giraffe Facts

Everything about a giraffe is built around its neck. For all its length — often more than six feet — it holds exactly seven vertebrae, the same number as almost every mammal including humans; each bone is simply enormously stretched rather than added. Bulls reach 16 to 18 feet tall, cows a little less. Both sexes carry ossicones, blunt horn-like knobs of hardened cartilage covered in skin. The coat's ragged patches, outlined by pale channels, break up the outline in dappled shade, and the pattern is unique to each animal like a fingerprint. Genetics has recently upended the old picture of a single species: many biologists now recognise up to four (Northern, Southern, Reticulated, and Masai), which changes how the animals are counted and protected.

Giraffes are found only in Africa, and what was once a continuous range is now a patchwork. The main populations are in East and Southern Africa — Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa — with a small, precarious group of West African giraffes surviving in Niger. They favour open, dry country: savanna, thin woodland, and semi-arid scrub dotted with tall broadleaf trees. They avoid dense forest, where their height stops being an advantage and becomes a hindrance.

The giraffe is a high browser, and the reach is the whole strategy: it takes leaves, shoots, flowers, and seed pods from the tops of trees, above the line every shorter grazer can manage, so it competes with almost nothing else for food. Acacias are a staple, thorns included — a tongue up to 18 inches long and tough, mobile lips extract foliage from between the spines. As a ruminant it ferments this fibre in a four-chambered stomach and spends much of the day chewing cud. It also pulls most of its water straight from leaves, letting it go days without drinking — useful where waterholes are prime ambush ground for lions.

Giraffe society is loose and shifting — a fission–fusion system with no permanent membership and no herd leader. Individuals, cows especially, move freely between groups as food and company change, though a mother and her young calf stay closely bonded. Height and excellent long-range eyesight are the first defence; a kick is the second, powerful enough to kill a lion. Between bulls, competition turns brutal: two males stand side by side and swing their heavy heads and necks like clubs, landing jarring blows on each other's flanks. These "necking" fights decide dominance and mating rights, and the heaviest-necked bulls usually prevail.

Gestation lasts about 15 months, and the cow calves standing up — the newborn falls nearly six feet to the ground, a shock that breaks the cord and triggers its first breath. Within an hour the roughly six-foot, 150-pound calf is on its feet and nursing. Instead of hiding their young, giraffes group them: several mothers leave their calves together in a crèche while one keeps watch and the rest go off to browse. Even so, the first months are lethal — lions, leopards, and hyenas take a heavy share of calves. Those that reach full size can live 20 to 25 years in the wild.

Because giraffes are easy to spot in well-known parks, their decline has slipped under the radar — biologists call it a "silent extinction." The IUCN rates the species Vulnerable, with numbers down by roughly 30% over three decades and several populations listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered. The main pressures are habitat loss and fragmentation, as farming, livestock, and settlement break up the savanna and sever old movement corridors, and poaching — giraffes are caught in wire snares for bushmeat and sometimes killed for their tails and hides. Conservation now focuses on reconnecting isolated reserves and protecting the specific populations closest to the edge.

• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Giraffa camelopardalis
• Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF)
• San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance: Giraffe Biology
• African Wildlife Foundation (AWF): Giraffe Conservation