What animal am I? -> GIRAFFE

Week 6 of our “What animal am I?” series .…Clues during the week -> featured animal revealed on Thursdays.

Clue 1: Insomnia? -> They usually sleep standing, sometimes sitting, curl their necks and sleep for about five minutes at a time, sleeping no more than 30 minutes a day.

Clue 2: built like a battering ram -> Male giraffes fight for females by “necking”. They stand side by side and swing the backs of their heads into each other’s ribs and legs. Their skulls are thick and they have horn-like growths called ossicones on the tops of their heads. Their heads are like battering rams and are capable of breaking their opponents’ bones.

Clue 3: Ruminant -> any of various cud-chewing hoofed mammals having a stomach divided into 4 (occasionally 3) compartments. Ruminants are mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions.

GIRAFFE

Did you know: Evolution - around 15 million years ago, antelope-like animals were roaming the dry grasslands of Africa. There was nothing very special about them, but some of their necks were a bit long.

Within a mere 6 million years, they had evolved into animals that looked like modern giraffes, though the modern species only turned up around 1 million years ago. Giraffes are the tallest mammals on Earth with the okapi being its closest relative.

The Giraffe’s legs alone are taller than many humans—about 1.8m, but their neck is too short to reach the ground.

Giraffe:

Lifespan: 20 – 25 years (in the wild)

Speed: 60 km/h for short sprints & 50 km/h for several km

Scientific name: Giraffa

Mass: 800kg – 1200kg (female – male adult)

Height: 4.3 – 5.7 m (female -male)

Name: “Camelopard" is an old English name for the giraffe deriving from the Ancient Greek for camel and leopard, referring to its camel-like shape & movements and its leopard-like colouring.

Herd: Giraffes live in herds of related females and their offspring, or bachelor herds of unrelated adult males, but are sociable and may gather in large aggregations. Males establish social hierarchies through "necking", which are combat bouts where the neck is used as a weapon.

Neck & necking

A giraffe's neck alone is 1.8 – 2.4 m long and weighs about 272 kg. The animal's legs are also around the same length. Their necks are however too short to reach the ground. As a result, it has to awkwardly spread its front legs or kneel to reach the ground for a drink of water.

Until recently it was assumed that giraffes’ long necks evolved to help them feed, reaching leaves on tall trees that nobody else can reach.  This advantage is real, as giraffes can and do feed up to 4.5 m high, while even quite large competitors, such as kudu, can feed up to only about 2 m high.

Picture: The giraffe (right) and its close relative the okapi (left) both have 7 cervical vertebrae (like us humans!). However the giraffe’s vertebrae’s can EACH be over 28 cm long

New research however has another theory: Male giraffes use their necks as weapons in combat to fight for females by “necking”. They stand side by side and swing the backs of their heads into each other’s ribs and legs. To help with this, their skulls are unusually thick, and they have horn-like growths called ossicones on the tops of their heads. Their heads are like battering rams and are capable of breaking their opponents’ bones. What do you think, plausible?

Horns: Both male and female giraffes have two distinct, hair-covered horns called ossicones. The ossicones of females and young are thin and display tufts of hair on top, whereas those of adult male’s end in knobs and tend to be bald on top.

Thick-skinned: The skin of a giraffe is mostly gray. Its thickness allows the animal to run through thorn bushes without being punctured. The fur may serve as a chemical defence, as its parasite repellents give the animal a characteristic scent. However some parasites feed on giraffes and they may rely on oxpeckers to clean them of ticks and alert them to danger.

High Blood pressure: The tallest ever giraffe was 5.8 m tall and to pump blood all the way up its long neck, the giraffe has several adaptations in its cardiovascular system. Its heart, which can weigh about 12 kg and measures 60 cm long, must generate approximately double the blood pressure required for a human to maintain blood flow to the brain. Giraffes have unusually high heart rates for their size, at 150 beats per minute.

Making it the biggest heart in the animal kingdom!

When the animal lowers its head the blood rushes down a complex web of arteries and veins lying very close to each other in the upper neck, prevents excess blood flow to the brain. When it raises again, the blood vessels constrict and direct blood into the brain, so the animal does not faint. The jugular veins contain several (most commonly seven) valves to prevent blood flowing back into the head while the head is lowered.

Legs & movement: The skin of the lower legs is thick and tight preventing too much blood from pouring into them. Their legs are incredibly powerful and each of them ends in a hard, sharp, 30-centimetre hoof. A giraffe can kick in any direction and in a manner of ways and its kick can not only kill a lion.

Unsurprisingly, very few predators bother an adult giraffe. However, in the Kruger National Park, lions have adapted to chase Giraffes across tar roads in the hope they slip so they can get to the Giraffes necks to kill them without exposing themselves to the dangerous kicks.

A giraffe walks like a camel, moving the legs on one side of the body at the same time, then doing the same on the other side. When galloping, the hind legs move around the front legs before the latter move forward. The giraffe relies on the forward and backward motions of its head and neck to maintain balance while galloping. If you have ever watched a giraffe gallop, you will agree – it looks like slow-motion.

Calf:  The mother gives birth standing up. The calf emerges head and front legs first and falls to the ground, severing the umbilical cord. A new-born giraffe is 1.7–2 m tall. After their +/- 2m drop at birth, the giraffe calf can stand up and walk about an hour later and within a week, it starts to sample vegetation.

Mothers with calves will gather in nursery herds, moving or browsing together. This is known as a "calving pool”.

Habitat: Grasslands and open woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa. 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 usually inhabit savannahs and woodlands.

Food: A giraffe eats around 34 kg of foliage daily, primarily acacia species. As a *Ruminants*, the giraffe first chews its food, then swallows it for processing and then visibly passes the half-digested cud up the neck and back into the mouth to chew again. Giraffes only need to drink once every few days as most of their water comes from all the plants they eat.

*Ruminant*: any of various cud-chewing hoofed mammals having a stomach divided into four (occasionally three) compartments. Ruminants are mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions.

Tongue: The giraffe's tongue is about 45 cm long. It is purplish-black in colour, perhaps to protect against sunburn, and is useful for grasping foliage, as well as for grooming and cleaning the animal's nose.

Insomnia: In the wild, giraffes almost never lie down because of vulnerability to predators. They usually sleep standing, sometimes sitting, and they give birth standing up. When giraffes sleep, they curl their necks and sleep for about five minutes at a time, sleeping no more than 30 minutes a day.

Sounds: Whilst it was thought that giraffes did not make any sounds, this is now known to be untrue, as giraffes bellow, snort, hiss and make flute-like sounds, as well as low pitch noises beyond the range of human hearing. 

What animal am I? -> MEERKAT

Week 4 of our “What animal am I?” series .…Clues during the week -> featured animal revealed on Thursdays.

Clue 1: False identity? -> The word Meerkat is Dutch/Afrikaans for “lake cat”, although Meerkats don't live near lakes and they are not cats. They in fact belong to the Mongoose family.

Clue 2: Mob & sentry go hand in hand -> A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang" or "clan". Meerkats forage in a group with 1 -2 sentries watching for predators while the others search for food.

Clue 3: Claim to fame in 1994 -> Timon (Meerkat) and Pumbaa (Warthog) are the famous duo introduced in Disney's 1994 animated film “The Lion King”. Hakuna matata – no worries!

MEERKAT - Suricata

The meerkat belongs to the mongoose family and are active during the day. It is the only member of the genus Suricata. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia, southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. 

Meerkat:

Lifespan: 12 – 14 years (in captivity)

Speed: 32 km/h

Scientific name: Suricata suricatta

Mass: 0.6 to 0.9 kg (adult)

Body length: 25 – 35cm (adult without tail)

Did you know: A mob/clan of meerkats will always have one "sentry" on guard to watch out for predators while the others forage for food.

False identity: The word Meerkat is Dutch/Afrikaans for “lake cat”, although Meerkats don't live near lakes and they are not cats. In addition in casual Afrikaans, mier means termite, and kat means cat. It has been speculated that the name comes from their frequent association with termite mounds or the termites they eat.

Mob: A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang" or "clan". A meerkat clan often contains about 20 meerkats, but some super-families have 50 or more members of which usually all are related. They are normally territorial and live in large underground tunnels. The mob comprised of equal numbers of males and females and these family groups, are led by an alpha pair, with the female being the most dominant.

Each meerkat mob will have a territory which they mark off with their scent. It is usually around 10km². They won't allow another group or mob of meerkats into their territory and will fight them, if needed. They move around within the territory each day in order to forage for food in different spots. 

If the group feels threatened by a predator, they will sometimes try mobbing or attacking it in a group. Although they usually run, they can be fierce fighters when needed.

Sentry: Meerkats forage in a group with 1 - 2 sentries watching for predators while the others search for food. Sentry duty is usually approximately an hour long. The meerkat standing guard makes peeping sounds when all is well. Meerkats have binocular vision, with two eyes on the front of the face as well as sense of smell and hearing. Generally, the sentry or lookout, will stand up straight on its hind legs using its tail as a tripod to balance.

This is so that it can get as high as possible to look for predators in the air and on the ground.

When a predator is spotted, the lookout meerkats will give a warning bark or whistle and rest of the family will quickly escape into one of the many entrances of their underground burrow. They take night shelter in their vast network of underground tunnels which also doubles to keep them cool from the hot desert sun.

Claim to fame: Timon (Meerkat) and Pumbaa (Warthog) are the famous duo introduced in Disney's 1994 animated film “The Lion King”.

Famous quote: Hakuna matata roughly translates to "there are no troubles" in Swahili, was translated to the now popular phrase "no worries." Which is the opposite of the meerkat’s behaviour!

Meerkats popularity grew further with the TV show Meerkat Manor from Animal Planet that followed several Meerkat families in the Kalahari Desert.

When colonies are exposed to human presence for a long time, they will become habituated, which allows for documentation of their natural behaviour. It is not unusual for camera crews, who must largely stay still for long periods while filming, to be utilized as convenient sentry posts.

Features: Meerkats have four toes on each foot and at the end of each of them is a claw used for digging burrows and digging for prey. Claws are also used with muscular hindlegs to help climb trees. The eyes are distinctively dark-ringed, with their coat being usually peppered grey, tan, or brown with silver. They have short parallel stripes across their backs with dark-tipped, short-haired, tapered tails.

The underside of the meerkat has no markings, but the belly has a patch which is only sparsely covered with hair and shows the black skin underneath.

Diet: Meerkats are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals. They catch their preferred insects, small rodents, geckos, snakes, scorpions, spiders, eggs, small mammals, millipedes, centipedes and sometimes small birds with lightning swiftness, but also feed on plants and fungi (the desert truffle).

Since they don't have a lot of body fat, meerkats need to eat every day to keep their energy up. For example, meerkat adults teach their pups how to eat a venomous scorpion: they will remove the stinger and help the pup learn how to handle the creature.

Predators: Martial eagles, tawny eagles and jackals are the main predators of meerkats. Meerkats are immune to certain types of venom, including the very strong venom of the scorpions of the Kalahari Desert. However some snakebites from the Puff Adder & Cape Cobras can lead to death.

Breeding: In each clan there is an alpha pair of meerkats that lead the group. The alpha pair typically reserves the right to mate and produce offspring. If others in the clan reproduce, then the alpha pair will usually kill the young and may kick the mother out of the clan. 

The entire group participates in the care and maintenance of young. While the pack is out foraging for food, one helper remains at the den to tend to the young. They babysit the young in the group and will protect them threats, often endangering their own lives. On warning of danger, the babysitter takes the young underground to safety and is prepared to defend them if the danger follows. Animals in the same group groom each other regularly. 

Meerkats, being wild animals, make poor pets. They can be aggressive, especially toward guests and they may also bite. They will scent-mark their owner and the house (their "territory")