When one asks our guests what animals they would love to see, then usually one gets to hear the cliche “Big5”. Notwitstanding that most are not 100% sure what animals are part of the Big5, I always find it surprising that most of our visitors actually are most impressed by the sights of giraffes. But then again I am not because giraffes are very unusual animals, huge in size, yet elegant, and remarkably different to any other animal in this world. If there is one animal that is uniquely African, then it probably is the giraffe.
So here a little information about giraffes, and how they live.
First off, a record: giraffes are the tallest living terrestrial animals and the largest ruminant!
The latin name is giraffa camelopardalis, referring to the camel-like appearance and fur patches that look like the ones of leopards. Romans gave them that name, for those reasons, as they thought they were a mix between a camel and a leopard.
What’s the origin of the name? As so often in Africa, most likely from an Arabic word: zarafa (meaning “fast walker”), which was later adopted by European languages, to begin with Italian (giraffa), then in appearing in French (girafe), which was then adopted by the English language soon afterwards (as most English courts and upper class English mostly spoke French only at the time).
Our local tribes, mostly Shangaan, call them “nthutlwa”.
Their long necks are believed to have developed through natural selection, as animals with longer necks could reach leaves on higher trees where no other animals can reach them, and so had a competitive advantage and were more likely to pass on their genes.
Having a long neck poses all sorts of issues. Giraffes don’t have more neck vertebrae, they have much longer cervical vertebrae (some of them up to 30 cm each!), which again requires huge back muscles and nuchal ligaments, which are so large that they give the giraffe a hump on the back. The heart also weigs in at about 12kg, to pump sufficient blood throughout this large body, and the heart has to pump at a much higher rate to other mammals to achieve this: over 150 beats a minute!
The jugular veins also contain several valves to prevent too much blood rushing into the brain when the head is lowered, as well as the rete mirabile in the upper neck. Due to their long legs excess blood is at risk of pumping into them, so thick and tight skin prevents this from happening.
As with most animal species in this world, their numbers are under pressure due to habitat destruction. In 1999 over 140,000 giraffes existed in the wild in Africa, while it is closer to 80,000 only for the whole of Africa nowadays. On our reserve we have over 1000 of them, so the Blue Canyon Conservancy, of which the Moditlo Private Game Reserve forms an integral part of, is a key contributor to the long-term survival of this species. It is currently not classified as endangered yet, but some of the 9 sub-species are, such as the Rothschild giraffe, of which only 250 are left, if recent estimates are correct.
So, here some of our own giraffes. These shots were taken by Pierre over recent days!
