Giraffes

Names & Nicknames: Giraffes or camelopards. The four species of giraffe are called the northern giraffe, southern giraffe, Masai giraffe, and reticulated giraffe

Size: It’s no wonder a group of giraffes is called a tower; these giants are the tallest animals on planet Earth. Females can weigh up to 1,180kg and males up to 1,900kg. But what's really impressive is their height. Giraffes range from around 4.3-5.8 metres with the males being larger than the females, and the Masai giraffe being the largest species. That means the biggest giraffes are 2 and a half times taller than Shaquille O’Neal!

Smell: Despite their massive size, you might smell a giraffe before you see them. They're said to have a strong, musty, and somewhat poopy smell. Large males are known to be the smelliest – aptly referred to as stink bulls. This stank does have a purpose; it's caused by chemicals in their fur believed to act as a natural defence against parasites and bacteria.

Communication: Giraffes live in complex social groups and communicate with each other through a series of smells, calls and gestures. It's thought that some of these calls are infrasonic (too low to be heard by humans), and that they can identify each other by the shapes of their spots, as every single giraffe spot is unique, just like a human fingerprint.

Favourite Hangout: Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Where exactly depends on which species of giraffe you're looking at – one thing they have in common is they all love to live in wide-open savannahs. A wide-open grassland like that means if you're as tall as a giraffe you can see all around you for any potential predators or tasty trees to snack on.

Favourite Snack: Giraffes are herbivores that feed mainly on leaves but also on shoots, flowers, vines, and herbs. Their favourite leaves are that of acacia, mimosa, and wild apricot trees. They can eat almost 50kg of leaves a day and this helps classify them as ‘mega browsers’ alongside other huge herbivores such as elephants and rhinos.

Eating Habits: Being so tall does have its advantages: you can scout for predators, plus you get exclusive access to the tasty leaves right at the top of the tree. Once a giraffe has found a good bunch, they go to work using their long tongues and flexible lips to strip leaves away from thorny branches without getting poked.

Toilet Humour: Despite their size, a giraffe's poo is very small, each pellet is only around the size of a marble. They do produce up to 15kg of these marbles a day however, so if you do see a dusting of Maltesers on the savannah floor, maybe think twice before giving them a try.

Love Language: Giraffe courtship is a complex affair, involving a ritual of nudging, sniffing, and dancing, but the most unusual aspect of this ritual involves urine sampling. If a female is open to a male's advances, she will widen her stance and begin to do her business while the male catches the urine in his mouth. He'll curl up his lips and take a sip, an act called flehmen – sampling the urine like a fine wine to see if she's ready to mate. PEEnot grigio anyone?

If you see them: A fan favourite on a safari – see if you can spot their long dark blue tongues as they feed on leaves. Just make sure to keep a distance, they may look pretty relaxed but they can give a nasty kick, which is apparently like being hit by a small car.

Red Flags: The four main threats to giraffes are habitat loss, climate change, illegal hunting, and civil unrest. Civil unrest does not just affect humans, but wildlife as well. Given the volatility of some of the areas giraffes live in, conservation efforts can break down and poaching and hunting increase during times of civil unrest. In fact, in areas of civil unrest between 1985 and 2015, giraffe numbers plummeted by as much as 40%!

Epic Journeys: Having such long legs means you can cover some distance pretty quickly and easily. Giraffes may travel long distances to find mates, food, and to avoid predators. How far a giraffe travels depends on the species, season, and location, with some intrepid trotters travelling over 11,000 square kilometres.

Glow-up: Giraffes have a pretty rough start to life. Female giraffes give birth standing up, which means baby giraffes enter the world with a two-metre fall to the ground. After about 30 minutes of stumbling, they are ready to walk and within 10 hours they can sprint at full speed. Talk about life coming at you fast.

Facts: A baby giraffe can stand up immediately after being born (see above) and this is partly because the veins in their legs inflate right away. Well, this clever system actually inspired NASA to develop a space suit that helped astronauts maintain strong leg veins during long space missions without gravity.

Who are they in the friendship group: The one who just doesn't seem to stop growing?!?

How threatened are they?: Giraffes were originally thought to just be one species which was listed as Vulnerable. Now there are known to be four species of giraffe, the list is expected to be updated in 2025 so that one species will listed as Least Concern, two as Endangered, and one, the Northern Giraffe, as Critically Endangered.