Name
Name: Ava Dowd Date: 6-1-18
Organism Research Paper Period: 6
Everyone can recognize this animal particularly by their height and coat. This animal is a giraffe. Giraffe’s have the greatest range of vision compared to any other land animal, this is partially due to how tall they are.
Female giraffes range from a height of 14-16 feet. Male giraffes tend to to be taller than female giraffes, their height ranges from 16-20 feet. Male giraffes tend to grow up to 18 feet tall. The female giraffes weigh up to 1,500 pounds. However, male giraffes can have a weight of up to 3,000 pounds. Giraffes average width is about 6 feet. A giraffe has whitish yellow skin, with unique brownish or reddish markings. Their markings range in size and shape, by their face the markings tend to be smaller, and on their body the markings range from small to large. Just like there are no two snowflakes that are the same, there are no two giraffes that are the same. They differ in the way their markings are, their markings vary in size, shape, color, and the amount of white around them. Giraffes are commonly found in central, eastern and southern Africa. “Giraffes live in the savannas of Africa, where they roam freely among the tall trees, arid land, dense forests and open plains.” (Paragraph 2, Basic Facts About Giraffes) Giraffes inhabit the African savanna. Savannas are biologically diverse, and are populated by an astounding community of animal life that crawls, walks, and flies. ——-Thesis Statement Needed—————————————-
Giraffes play a major role in their ecosystem. Giraffes provide food for birds in the savannas, particularly for oxpecker birds. Ticks live off of the blood or giraffes, and the oxpecker birds like eating ticks. The birds perch on a giraffe’s neck and shoulders, and eat the ticks feasting on the giraffes blood. The birds are helping the giraffes by removing the tiny pests, while the giraffes help the birds by “giving them a safe place to roost while they eat while providing them with nutritious meals.” (…) It isn’t unlikely to find prey animals of a variety of species close to the giraffes, and this isn’t because giraffes don’t need to compete with these animals for food. Giraffes tall necks and superior vision give them an advantage when looking far distances. They are are to spot predators like lions or hyenas when their far away as they begin creeping through the tall grasses. Many animals see giraffes as an alert system, when the giraffes start to run away, the other animals instantly know to follow. The adult giraffes have very few successful predators. On the other hand, baby giraffes have a high mortality. Adult giraffes are to large for many predators to attack, and they can “pack quite a kick with their front hooves.” Baby giraffes weigh about 110 pounds, this makes it easier for the predators to tackle them because they are weaker than the adult giraffes. Being that the baby giraffe is to weak to fight off the predators, to them it’s a hard earned meal, some predators such as a lion, leopard, crocodile or hyena pack. There are less than 80,000 giraffes left in the wild, while some subspecies are close to extinction. “Giraffes are endemic to Africa and all those found elsewhere in the world originate from the continent. Giraffes in Africa are particularly under threat due to habitat fragmentation and degradation. Their habitat is being increasingly broken up through development, urban sprawl and agricultural intensification.”
