Giraffe

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus named the giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis in 1758. The species name means camel-leopard: the Greeks and Romans took the animal for a cross between the two. Linnaeus based his description on a picture of a live giraffe drawn by Belon du Mans in 1553, not on a specimen. The type locality was later fixed as Sennar in Sudan, and a skeleton from Ethiopia now serves as the reference specimen. The word giraffe probably reached English through Italian and French from the Arabic zarafa.

The giraffe belongs to the family Giraffidae, which it shares only with the okapi of the Congo forest. It is an even-toed ungulate and a ruminant, so it sits in the same order as cattle, deer and antelope. For most of the last century, scientists recognised one species with nine regional subspecies that all interbreed. Genetic studies then sorted the animals into a West African group, a northern group and a southern group. Since August 2025 the IUCN specialist group for giraffes has counted four species: northern, Masai, reticulated and southern. This page treats the giraffe as one species, the older and still common approach.

Evolution and relatives

Giraffes are thought to have evolved alongside acacia trees across the savannas of Africa. Seven extinct species of Giraffa are known from fossils. The earliest northern giraffes lived in Chad in the late Pliocene. Giraffes lived in Algeria from the early Pleistocene and survived in Morocco, Libya and Egypt until about AD 600. The drying of the Sahara then pushed them south, and they have never lived in the Congo rainforest.

The giraffe's height comes from two stretches of the skeleton: the neck bones and the lower leg bones. All seven neck vertebrae lengthened evenly, and the leg bones thickened their walls to bear the load. Growing that skeleton needs large amounts of calcium and phosphorus, which shapes the animal's diet. The heart changed too: blood pressure is twice that of a mammal of similar size, and the left ventricle wall thickens with neck length. Genetic differences between the regional forms are small, which is why the species question stays open.

Appearance

A bull stands about 3.3 metres at the shoulder and 5.7 metres to the top of the head. A cow is 0.7 to 1 metre shorter. Height to the crown runs from 4.3 to 5.7 metres across the species. Bulls weigh up to 1,930 kilograms and cows up to 1,180 kg. The back slopes steeply from the shoulders to the rump, and the front legs are longer than the hind legs. The tail is thin, 80 to 100 centimetres long, and ends in a black tuft that swats flies.

The coat shows patches of yellow, brown or nearly black on a pale ground. Patches can be large or small, sharp-edged or fuzzy, and the pattern varies by region. Each animal keeps its own pattern for life, though the colour can change with season and health. The skin beneath is a uniform dark grey. The patches hold large sweat glands and a special web of blood vessels, so they probably work as windows that shed heat.

Both sexes carry horns called ossicones, which are bone covered in skin and hair. A cow's horns are thin and tufted, while a bull's are thick and worn smooth by sparring. Some bulls add a second pair further back, and northern bulls carry a third horn on the forehead 76 to 127 millimetres long. The eyes are very large, and the dark tongue is about 45 centimetres long.

Habitat and range

Giraffes live in savanna, grassland and open woodland where acacia trees grow. They favour dry country and can live far from water, because they drink only now and then. Bulls push into denser woodland after more leaves, while cows stay in the open. Big rivers are barriers: a giraffe cannot swim and will not cross flowing water easily.

The species once ranged from Senegal and the Gambia across to Ethiopia and Somalia, and south to the Orange River in South Africa. It is now gone from Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Eritrea and Mozambique. In West Africa a single population survives in Niger, with a second group started at Gadabedji in 2018. Central Africa holds almost 2,400 Kordofan giraffes in Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and northeast Congo. The strongholds are East and southern Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

South African game reserves have brought giraffes back to land they had lost, and Eswatini and Rwanda have introduced them. Giraffes hold no territory, and home ranges vary from 5 to 654 square kilometres with the supply of food and water. GBIF holds records from 39 countries, but that count includes zoos and old records.

Diet and feeding

The giraffe is a browser, and it eats leaves, flowers, seed pods and fruit from trees and shrubs. Acacia is the main food, and four kinds of Acacia and four of Combretum make up most of the diet. These trees are rich in protein and calcium, which the giraffe needs for its huge skeleton. A bull can eat up to 66 kilograms of browse a day, but a giraffe survives on 7 kg where food is poor. It eats no grass at all.

The long tongue, narrow muzzle and flexible upper lip pull leaves from between the thorns. A giraffe takes a branch in its mouth and pulls its head away to strip the leaves, and its molars crush the thorns. Bulls feed with the neck fully stretched into the underside of the canopy. Cows feed at body and knee height from lower trees and shrubs, and they choose the most nourishing leaves.

Like cattle, the giraffe is a ruminant with a four-chambered stomach, and it chews the cud through the hot midday. Its stomach is only half the size of a buffalo's, because leaves digest more easily than grass. Most of its water comes from juicy leaves, so it can go a long time without drinking. In the dry season giraffes lick salty soil and chew old bones to top up minerals.

Behaviour and social life

Giraffes live in loose, open herds of 10 to 20 animals, and groups of up to 70 have been seen. Members come and go as they please, and a herd rarely keeps the same animals for more than a few days. A herd may be all cows, all bulls, cows with calves, or a mix. Cows are more social than bulls, and old bulls often wander alone. Herd members scatter widely to feed and gather again at good trees or when a predator appears.

Giraffes feed and drink in the morning and evening and rest in shade through the heat of the day. They sleep standing up, with half-closed eyes and twitching ears, and lie down only now and then. In deep sleep the head rests back on a hind leg with the neck in an arch. A giraffe sleeps only a few hours a day. At a walk both legs on one side swing together, which gives it an odd rolling gait. It can run at 32 to 60 kilometres per hour and keep a sprint going for some distance.

Bulls settle rank by sparring, called necking. Two bulls stand stiff-legged side by side, rub and twine their necks, and lean on each other to test strength. In a real fight each swings his head like a club at the other's flank or neck, and a hard blow can floor a bull. Giraffes have been seen standing over a dead herd member for hours or days.

Communication and senses

People long thought the giraffe was mute, because it is so rarely heard. It does make sounds: grunts, snorts, hisses, moans, snores and whistle-like or flute-like calls. Giraffes are also believed to use infrasound, too low for human ears. An alarmed giraffe grunts or snorts to warn the others. A cow whistles to her calf and bellows when she has lost it, and the calf bleats or mews back. A courting bull coughs loudly.

Sight is the giraffe's main sense, and its height gives it a view no other land mammal has. Herd members keep in visual contact across great distances, and they spot lions far off. Bulls read a cow's readiness by tasting her urine with a curled lip, the flehmen response. Like other ruminants, the giraffe probably relies on smell and hearing more than its silence suggests.

Reproduction and life cycle

Giraffes are polygynous, and a bull guards a cow in heat from other bulls. Courtship starts with the urine test, then the bull rubs his head on the cow's rump and rests it on her back. He licks her tail and lifts a foreleg, and if she is willing she circles him and holds her tail out. Breeding can happen in any month, but most conceptions fall in the rains and most births from May to August. A cow breeds every 20 to 30 months.

Gestation lasts about 457 days, roughly 15 months. The cow gives birth standing or even walking, so the calf falls about 2 metres to the ground. One calf is the rule, and twins are rare. A newborn weighs around 100 kilograms and is on its feet and suckling within an hour. For its first week the calf lies hidden most of the day and night while the mother feeds within 25 metres.

After three or four weeks the mother steers her calf into a creche with other calves. The cows take turns on watch, so a mother can feed up to 200 metres away and return before dark to suckle. Calves suckle for about a year and are weaned at 12 to 16 months. Up to 75% of calves die in their first year, most of them taken by lions. Cows mature at 3 to 4 years, and bulls at 4 to 5, though a bull does not breed until about seven. Wild giraffes live 10 to 15 years, and captive animals 20 to 25, with a record of 27.

Predators and threats

The lion is the main predator, and leopards, hyenas and crocodiles at waterholes also take giraffes. Predators go for calves and for sick or old animals. A healthy adult is hard to kill: it sees danger far off, runs fast and kicks hard enough to kill a lion. The blotched coat also helps hide a feeding giraffe in scrub. Ticks trouble giraffes, and oxpecker birds ride on their necks and backs to pick the ticks off.

People are the larger threat. Giraffes are hunted and poached for meat, hide and tail hair. Farms and settlements take the acacia woodland they feed in. West African numbers have collapsed, while the East and southern populations hold up better. One reason giraffes survive where other big mammals vanish may be their height, which keeps them out of competition with cattle and goats.

Population and conservation

The IUCN Red List rates the giraffe as Vulnerable. The 2016 assessment put the world population at about 97,000, down from at least 100,000 when the species was called not threatened. Current estimates put the total closer to 117,000. Some populations are stable, some grow and others shrink, so the picture varies by country.

The West African giraffe is the worst off, rated Endangered, with fewer than 200 animals in southwest Niger in the early 2000s. Niger has made the giraffe a conservation priority, and its numbers have grown to a few hundred. In 2018 eight giraffes were moved to the Gadabedji Reserve to found a second population, and four more followed in 2022. The northern giraffe as a whole is the least numerous of the four groups and the most endangered.

In Uganda, wildlife officials and a giraffe charity have relocated Nubian giraffes to Kidepo, Pian Upe, Lake Mburo and Murchison Falls. Southern Africa has restocked many reserves from which giraffes had been shot out. Settling the species question would help, because each genetic group would then be assessed and protected on its own.

Relationship with humans

Giraffes have no known harmful effect on people. They do not raid crops, and a giraffe on foot is not aggressive unless cornered. Africans have hunted them for meat and for the thick hide, which was made into buckets, reins, whips and harness straps. The hide has also covered drums and other instruments, and tail hair goes into bracelets and fly whisks.

A live giraffe from Sennar was once kept in Cairo, and it became the basis for the scientific name. A giraffe skull called Zarafa from Sennar sits in the Paris natural history museum, and a giraffe from Ethiopia was the first ever dissected. Today giraffes are a main attraction of zoos and wildlife parks around the world. In Africa they draw safari tourists, which gives parks and neighbouring communities a reason to keep them.

In culture and myth

The Greeks and Romans saw the giraffe as a camel-leopard, a cross between the two, and the name stuck in Latin. The constellation Camelopardalis, in the northern sky, is named after it. African folktales explain how the giraffe came by its long neck, usually as a reward or a punishment. In some African traditions the giraffe is a spirit animal that links the earth to the sky, because its head rides so high.

Modern writers make it a symbol of far-sightedness, grace and flexibility. It has also come to stand for Africa itself on posters, flags and safari brochures. The Swahili name twiga and the Zulu name indlulamithi, which means one who passes over trees, are among dozens of local names. Spirit-animal blogs add meanings of their own, but these seem to be recent inventions rather than folklore.