Giant Giraffe

Hello readers, thanks a lot for following blog space and showering your love towards this blog post. Your love motivates me to come up with a new topic every week so as you can explore new things and continue to bless me. Last week we explored Hyena who is ugly but unique than any other animal so this time around I thought to explore beautiful animal that is equally unique in terms of how nature has created them and how they survive with such huge built. Yes as the title suggests let us meet giant amongst all the lovely Giraffe.

DTH - Dark Tall and Handsome

Title DTH is absolutely matching with this cute animal, the dark light color combination, and tallest height and handsome because of a long neck, nothing is missing from making Giraffe from becoming DTH. I love Giraffe the most because of its simple nature and its unique behavior, you will also agree when you will see the facts in the coming sections below.

To start with let me share experience in short so you will understand why I love Giraffe and then will go to the other sections to explore it in detail. First time I saw Giraffe at Mysore zoo, it was in captivity, however, the area was huge to give comfort but still, it is not independence for them. they were roaming around in area allotted them, I was fascinated and decided to explore more but at the place where they are free to do anything hence I decided to visit Kenya which is apt place for Giraffe.

During Kenya visit we were lucky to see various unique activity they do in their routine, some of the unique behavior like drinking water, eating the leaf, socializing in a group with baby giraffe and most important and unique of all is necking (Must read in next section). The count in Kenya is not a problem hence we were able to capture almost everything day and day out, the tall height of Giraffe with a lovely background of Masai Mara was a deadly combination to make award-winning frames, please visit DSLR section to validate these lovely moments. As usual, you know our blog never ends without unknown facts, so let us take a tour to the fantastic facts of this Giant creature.

The Necking

The necking is a combat activity between male giraffes to establish dominance. They use their necks as a weapon in a combat, and male that wins necking bouts have greater reproductive success. This behavior occurs at the low or high intensity. In low-intensity necking, the combatants rub and lean against each other, the male that can hold itself more erect wins the bout. In high-intensity necking, the combatants will spread their front legs and swing their necks at each other, attempting to land blows with their ossicones (Ossicones are horn or antler-like, protuberances on the heads of giraffes). The contestants will try to dodge each other's blows and then get ready to counter. The power of a blow depends on the weight of the skull and the arc of the swing. Although most fights do not lead to serious injury, there have been records of broken jaws, broken necks, and even deaths. You have to be very lucky to experience this unique behavior in the wild. Mother Nature gifted us the necking moment in our Masai trip the experience was such that it is difficult to explain in words, do visit wildlife to explore and understand the beauty of our own nature.

Things you might not know

Giraffes are ruminants like a cow, they eat the leaves of trees, digest them for a while, then vomit up the half-digested leaves (the “cud”) so they can chew it some more and digest it again in a different part of their stomach. Because of this habit, Giraffes are classified as “Ruminants

Giraffes are the tallest amongst mammals. Males are sometimes 18 feet tall and range in around 3600 pounds

The giraffe can stay long without drinking water; the digestive system can obtain almost all the water that they need from the leaves that they eat, adult giraffes only need to drink once every couple of days

The rare white giraffe do exist; White giraffes still do have some pigmentation and dark eyes. Because they are so rare, it was a special treat to see one in Serengeti National Park

While the different sub-species of giraffes can appear to be similar, all giraffes have a unique pattern. Their spots also darken with age, and scientists have said that they can calculate their age from this darkening

The giraffe can run very fast. Thanks to its long legs, it can reach speeds of 35 mph (55 km/h)

The Giraffe likes all kinds of plants, but some of its favorites are very thorny. Because of this, its tongue is also very very tough, so that it doesn’t get hurt during lunch