The giraffe is an African artiodactyl mammal, the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant. It is traditionally considered to be one species, Giraffa camelopardalis, with nine subspecies. The giraffe’s chief distinguishing characteristics are its extremely long neck and legs, its horn-like ossicones, and its distinctive coat patterns. Its scattered range extends from Chad in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Niger in the west to Somalia in the east.
About Giraffe in brief
The giraffe is an African artiodactyl mammal, the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant. It is traditionally considered to be one species, Giraffa camelopardalis, with nine subspecies. The giraffe’s chief distinguishing characteristics are its extremely long neck and legs, its horn-like ossicones, and its distinctive coat patterns. Its scattered range extends from Chad in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Niger in the west to Somalia in the east. Giraffes live in herds of related females and their offspring, or bachelor herds of unrelated adult males, but are gregarious and may gather in large aggregations. Males establish social hierarchies through combat bouts where the neck is used as a weapon. Giraffe is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable to extinction, and has been extirpated from many parts of its former range. Estimates as of 2016 indicate that there are approximately 97,500 members of Giraffe in the wild. More than 1,600 were kept in zoos in 2010. The name giraffe has its earliest known origins in the Arabic word zarāfah, perhaps borrowed from the animal’s Somali name geri. The Italian form giraffa arose in the 1590s. The modern English form developed around 1600 from the French girafe. The species name Camelopardalis is from Latin.
It refers to its camel-like shape and its leopard-like colouring. The animal is classified under the family Giraffidae, along with its closest extant relative, the okapi. The family was once much more extensive, with over 10 fossil genera described. Their closest known relatives may have been the extinct deer-like climacocerids. They, together with the family Antilocapridae, have been placed in the superfamily Giraffoidea. The elongation of the neck appears to have started early in the giraffe lineage. One early ancestor has been dated variously to have lived 25–20 million years ago, 17mya or 18mya. This animal was medium-sized, slender and antelope-like, and resembled an okapi or a small giraffe. It lived in the subcontinent of Libya and resembled a giraffokerya in 15th century BC. It may have shared a clade with more massively built giraffids like Sivatherium Bramotus, Shitherium Shitheria and Samotherium ossium and Palaeomeryxia. These animals appeared throughout Africa and Eurasia and had a longer neck and ossicsicones and appeared bare-faced and bare-foot. They may have lived 15–15 mya–14.20 years ago and appeared in Libya, Libya, and Samitheria. They had a similar body shape to giraffones, but were much larger and more slender and slender. They lived in Africa throughout the 14th century.
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This page is based on the article Giraffe published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
