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Today on Animal Fact Files we’re talking about giraffes. Be sure to subscribe for more awesome animal facts! Thank you to Shiao for today’s request. Now, if Chester saw a giraffe, he would probably have a confused reaction, but most people are at least aware of the existence of literally the tallest living terrestrial animals.

Male giraffes, called bulls, can reach more than eighteen feet (5.5 meters) in height and more than two tons (1,930 kilograms) in weight. Female giraffes, called cows, are generally smaller than bulls, but that doesn’t stop them from being able to reach the best leaves on the savannah. Female giraffes, as compared to males, are more picky about what they eat. They’ll purposely seek out more nutritional food likely because they’re caring for at least one baby.

Male giraffes generally stretch out as far as they can to eat the leaves off the bottom of the tallest trees. Females, on the other hand, take the top leaves from shorter trees on the savannah. Either way, they can still reach food sources that other large mammals can’t, which may be a contributing factor as to why they’ve been able to live as long as they have: they don’t compete with man’s domestic mammals for resources.

Giraffes come with lots of different patterns. Generally speaking where a giraffe comes from can be determined by checking out its spots, though it can be said of all wild giraffes that they’re from Africa. There’s been a lot of debate in the scientific community about how giraffes should be classified.

As it currently stands, all giraffes belong to a single species, though just under a dozen subspecies have been identified. Some scientists argue that giraffes should be split into separate species due to differences in their DNA as well as their geographic isolation from each other. When you think of giraffes, do you think of them as a single species, or many different species?

Though giraffes aren’t really territorial, the males will spar with each other during the breeding season. The horns on the top of their heads are used during these matches. Considering female giraffes also have these horns, they probably don’t only appear for these rivalry matches which are referred to as necking. The males don’t usually cause significant damage to one another, though sometimes their injuries can be fatal. These are held as dominance displays over a group of females with the victor earning mating rights.

After mating, female giraffes gestate for more than a year and will literally plop out a baby who can stand within its first day. This is important because, while adult giraffes are usually safe from predators, babies are an easier target. Giraffe predators include lions, leopards, hyenas, crocodiles, and humans. In the wild, they may live ten to fifteen years, though they can almost double that age in captivity.

Giraffes are often seen carrying around birds called oxpeckers. This is a mutual relationship in action. The oxpeckers remove pesky ticks from a giraffe’s skin and thus in turn have an easy source of food. I would make a circle of life joke here, but that seems way too cliche.

For more facts on giraffes, check out the links in the description. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.