21st June: World Giraffe Day

World Giraffe Day was first celebrated in 2014. Here are ten facts about giraffes.

1. Stating the obvious, giraffes are tall. Pretty much everything about them is long. On average, giraffes are between 16 and 20 ft (4.8–6 m) tall; their necks or legs alone are about 6 feet long - taller than most people. They also have the longest tails of any land mammal. A giraffe's tail can be 8 feet long. Although their necks are long, they still have the same number of neck vertebrae as any other animal, including humans. They're just much bigger - about ten inches long.
2. A giraffe’s heart weighs around 11kg (25lb), compared to a human Heart which weighs between 0.2-0.45kg. The giraffe's heart is about two feet long.
3. They also have long tongues - around 20–21 in (50–53 cm) in length. A giraffe's tongue is dark Blue in colour, and this is thought to protect the tongue from the Sun while it is picking leaves off trees with it to eat. They spend a lot of time doing this as they need over 75 pounds of food a day.
4. They don't need to drink a lot, though. They get most of their moisture from their food and only need to drink Water every couple of days. This is just as well as although a giraffe's neck is long enough to reach leaves on a tree, it isn't long enough to reach the ground, so to drink, a giraffe has to spread its legs and stoop, not the best position to be in if a hungry Lion happens along. A giraffe's jugular vein has valves to stop all its blood from running to its head while it drinks.
5. Giraffes have one of the shortest sleep requirements of any mammal, only needing about four hours a day. Most of their sleep requirement is met by brief naps, lasting as brief a time as a minute or even less, taken while standing up.
6. They give birth standing up, too, which means a baby giraffe starts life by falling over five feet onto the ground. It is able to stand and run within an hour of being born. Baby giraffes are often looked after in creches by other females while the mother goes off looking for food. The males don't participate in parenting at all. A couple more facts about giraffes breeding - Female giraffes often return to where they were born to give birth, and male giraffes test a female's fertility by tasting her urine.
7. We all know that a Dog goes woof, a Cat goes miaow, a sheep goes baa and a Pig goes oink - but what sound does a giraffe make? Until recently, it was assumed they didn't make any sound at all but now we know that they bellow, snort, hiss and make flute-like sounds. They also make many sounds which are too low in frequency for humans to hear.
8. The ancient Greeks thought giraffes looked like Camels wearing leopard's coats and that is how they got their scientific name of Giraffa camelopardalis. The pattern of each giraffe's coat is unique, just like a human fingerprint.
9. As well as reaching leaves in trees, the giraffe's neck also comes in handy for spotting predators at a distance and in males, for fighting. Male giraffes swing their necks in order to head butt other males, an activity known as "necking". Giraffes have small horns called ossicones which probably means being head butted by one would hurt. The longer and stronger necked males tend to win the fight and therefore get the females.
10. In ancient Egyptian art, they were depicted as creatures of great power and strength. In 46BC Julius Caesar brought a giraffe back to Rome after a war to show off to the people. Sadly, once they people had seen it, Caesar fed it to lions. 1500 years later, Lorenzo de' Medici was gifted a giraffe by the sultan of Egypt. This giraffe fared a little better - people in Florence fed it treats from their upstairs windows.

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