Odd facts about the world’s tallest animal

NAIROBI // The giraffe’s bestknown feature – its neck – can be longer than most people are tall. But, like humans, it still only has seven vertebrae. Each vertebra is about 25 centimetres long.

The neck is used to reach high into trees for food but is too short to reach the ground, so the animals have to splay their legs or kneel down to drink water. Luckily, they only drink every few days and get most of their hydration from plants.

The neck is used in an elaborate ritual fight known as “necking”, in which giraffes swing at each other to establish which animal is dominant.

With its spotted pattern and long legs and neck, the giraffe was given the Latin name Camelopardalis, meaning “camel marked like a leopard”.

But the giraffe’s spots are not only for camouflage.

According to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF), each patch is surrounded by a sophisticated system of blood vessels that acts as thermal windows to release body heat.

It is not just the neck and legs that are outsize on a giraffe.

Its tongue can measure up to 50cm to give the animal even more leverage in nibbling from the top of its favoured tree, the acacia.

The tongue’s blue-black colour is believed to shield the organ from sun exposure.

It is widely accepted that a giraffe’s sticky saliva has antiseptic properties to protect it from spiky thorns on the acacia.

A giraffe’s heart weights up to 11 kilograms – to power blood up a neck of nearly two metres – and beats up to 170 times per minute, double the speed of a human heart.

Giraffes have one of the longest gestation periods, at 15 months.

They give birth standing up, which means their calves drop about two metres.

This startling introduction to life gets them up and running around in less than an hour.

A newborn calf is bigger than the average adult human being.