Our Understanding of Giraffes Does Not Measure Up

Giraffes are the “forgotten megafauna,” said the executive director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. Julian Fennessy

OKAVANGO DELTA, BOTSWANA — For the tallest animals on earth, giraffes can be awfully easy to overlook. Their ochered flagstone fur and arboreal proportions blend in seamlessly with the acacia trees on which they tirelessly forage, and they’re as quiet as trees, too: no whinnies, growls, trumpets or howls. “Giraffes are basically mute,” said Kerryn Carter, a zoologist at the University of Queensland in Australia. “A snort is the only sound I’ve heard.”

Yet watch giraffes make their stately cortege across the open landscape and their grandeur is operatic, every dip and weave and pendulum swing an aria embodied.

To giraffe researchers, the paradox of this keystone African herbivore goes beyond questions of its camouflaging coat. Giraffes may be popular, they said — a staple of zoos, corporate logos and the plush toy industry — but until recently almost nobody studied giraffes in the field.

“When I first became interested in giraffes in 2008 and started looking through the scientific literature, I was really surprised to see how little had been done,” said Megan Strauss, who studies evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota. “It was amazing that something as well known as the giraffe could be so little studied.”

Giraffes are the “forgotten megafauna,” said Julian Fennessy, a giraffe researcher and the executive director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. “You hear all about elephants, Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees, Dian Fossey and her mountain gorillas, but there’s been a massive paucity of information about giraffes.”

Now all that is changing fast, as a growing cadre of researchers seek to understand the spectacular biology and surprisingly complex behavior of what Dr. Fennessy calls a “gentle giant and the world’s most graceful animal.” Scientists have lately discovered that giraffes are not the social dullards or indifferent parents they were reputed to be, but instead have much in common with another charismatic mega-herbivore, the famously gregarious elephant.

Female giraffes, for example, have been found to form close friendships with one another that can last for years, while mother giraffes have displayed signs of persistent grief after losing their calves to lions.

“Giraffes have been underestimated, even thought of as a bit stupid,” said Zoe Muller, a wildlife biologist at the University of Warwick in England. But through advances in satellite and aerial tracking technology, improved hormonal tests and DNA fingerprinting methods to extract maximum data from giraffe scat, saliva and hair, and a more statistically rigorous approach to analyzing giraffe interactions, she said, “we’ve been able to map out their social structure and relationships in a much more sophisticated way; there’s a lot more going on than we appreciated.”

For their part, male giraffes ever in search of the next mating opportunity have been found to be astute appraisers of the local competition and will adjust their sexual strategy accordingly. Males generally gain in rank and access to fertile females with age, and the alpha bulls flaunt that seniority physically and behaviorally: The twin ossicones that sprout like a snail’s tentacles on top of a giraffe’s head thicken and lose their charming tuftiness; a bony mass bulges up in the middle of the forehead; the neck musculature grows visible; and the male’s posture becomes ever prouder and more unflinchingly vertical.

Andre Ganswindt of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and his colleagues have found that young bulls recently launched on their rutting career will, when they’re on their own, mimic the basic demeanor of their elders: head held high, neck puffed out, females pursued and prodded and their urine sniffed for signs of estrus. But should a dominant bull saunter into view, the younger males instantly drop their sexual antics and seek to make themselves look small and innocent.

“It’s a case of ‘When I’m alone I’m the big giraffe,’ ” Dr. Ganswindt said. “But as soon as there are bigger bulls present, ‘No, no, no, I’m just a child.’ ”

The younger bulls have reason to fear their elders’ wrath. Dominance clashes between male giraffes can be terrifying spectacles, as each bull repeatedly “necks” the other, using his massive neck as a sling to slam his head against his rival, sometimes to devastating, even lethal effect.

Dr. Ganswindt saw one bull that had somehow survived with a broken neck. “The neck grew together again,” he said, “but at a funny angle.”