Giraffes are the tallest land animals. Female giraffes can be up to 14 feet tall and weigh up to 1,500 pounds; males might stretch up to 18 feet and weigh 3,000 pounds. At these heights, giraffes could look into second-story windows.
The Earth’s tallest living land animals are in trouble. Giraffes, who reach heights of up to 18 feet, are declining at an alarming rate, and trade in wildlife body parts and anthropomorphic climate change are largely to blame.
Surprisingly, though, it’s not the world’s rising temperatures that are putting giraffes in jeopardy. In the East African savannas, for example, giraffes are unexpectedly adapting well to the hotter temperatures caused by climate change. However, what they are threatened by is the increasingly heavy rainfall. Since October 2020, large parts of East Africa have been experiencing extended dry conditions—punctuated by short, intense rainfall events that often lead to flash floods.
Consequently, in November 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a proposal to help protect several giraffe subspecies by listing many of them as either threatened or endangered on the U.S. Endangered Species List. If the proposal is enacted, it will be the first time that these long-necked, socially complex mammals who are native to Africa receive federal protections in the United States.
Masai giraffes are distinguishable from other species for their noticeably darker coloration. Their patches—vine-leaf-shaped with jagged edges—are large and dark brown, outlined by a creamy-brown hue that extends down their legs. U.S. officials want to list the Masai giraffe as a threatened species.
Body parts and products
Generally, a species is labeled “threatened” when it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future. Declaring a species “endangered” is the most severe level of threat under the law, indicating that a species is at immediate risk of extinction.
In November 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing many of the eight assessed giraffe subspecies as either threatened or endangered. In East Africa, the agency is recommending that two subspecies be listed—the Masai giraffe and the reticulated giraffe—as threatened. In North Africa, the three giraffe subspecies the officials are asking to be designated as endangered are the Kordofan (90% of the population has been lost since the 1980s), Nubian (98% of the population has been lost since the 1980s) and West African (77% of the population has been lost since the 1980s).
Sadly, the U.S. has become a significant market for giraffe parts and products, importing nearly 40,000 items (representing 4,000 individual giraffes) for at least a decade-long period, a 2018 report showed. American hunters travel to Africa to kill giraffes and bring back body parts—typically the head and neck—as trophies to be mounted on plaques or walls. Giraffe bone carvings, hides and leather are also available for sale in the U.S.
U.S. protections for giraffes, such as these reticulated giraffes, would combat wildlife trafficking, foster biodiversity, help protect a vulnerable species, promote sustainable economic practices and support ecosystem health. It would also ensure that the United States does not contribute further to their decline.
The body part market and climate change have put an almost insurmountable pressure on giraffe populations. If finalized, the proposed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule would curtail the hunting of giraffes and trade in their body parts by requiring a permit to import giraffe products into the U.S. The regulation would also expand new funding for research and other giraffe conservation efforts.
Environmental groups have been calling on federal officials to declare protections on giraffes since 2017. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will gather public comments on the proposal until February 19, 2025, and expects to finalize it within a year.
Drastic droughts and downpours
At the same time that giraffes are being targeted for their body parts, wide swaths of Africa have been dealing with more frequent droughts and heavier, shorter rains due to climate change. Global warming causes higher temperatures that increase the amount of water that evaporates from plants and the soil. Warmer oceans cause more water to evaporate into the air, which can then lead to more intense precipitation when the moisture-laden air moves over land or forms a storm system.
Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park is filled with giraffes, but it’s also home to baboons, buffalo, caracals, cheetahs, eland, elephants, gazelles, hartebeests, kudu, leopards, lions, waterbuck, wildebeests, zebras and baobab trees.
While climate change has long been expected to cause widespread declines in wildlife populations worldwide, little is known about the combined effects of climate change and human activities on the survival rates not only of giraffes, but of many, large, African herbivore species. Now, researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Zurich in Switzerland have concluded a decade-long study—the largest to date—of a giraffe population in the Tarangire National Park region of Tanzania.
Studying the effects of climate and human pressures on long-lived and slow-breeding animals like giraffes requires monitoring their populations over a long period of time and over a large area, enough to capture both climate variation and any immediate or delayed effects on survival. So, researchers used a study area that spanned more than 380 square miles, including sections both inside and outside of protected areas. They then obtained nearly 20 years of data on local rainfalls, temperatures and vegetation greenness during Tanzania’s dry seasons (June to October and late December to mid-March), long rains (March to May) and short rains (October to December); and followed the fates of 2,385 individually recognized giraffes of different ages and sexes over the final eight years of the two-decade period.
The scientists had predicted that higher temperatures would hurt adult giraffes because their very large body sizes might make them overheat; but, in fact, they found that higher temperatures positively affected adult giraffe survival. Giraffes have several physical features that help them to keep cool, such as long legs and necks for evaporative heat loss, specialized nasal cavities, an intricate network of arteries that supply blood to the brain and spot patches that radiate heat. However, the researchers noted, temperatures during the study period may not have exceeded the tolerable thermal range for giraffes, and an extreme heat wave in the future might reveal a threshold above which these massive animals might be harmed.
Tarangire National Park is famous for its green vegetation, especially during the green season from November to December. Scientists have collected nearly 20 years of data on local rainfalls, temperatures and vegetation greenness during the dry seasons, long rains and short rains.
On the other hand, during the rainier wet seasons, the survival of giraffe adults and calves was reduced. The researchers attributed that to a possible increase in disease and parasites. A previous study in the Tarangire region had demonstrated that giraffe gastrointestinal parasite intensities were higher during the rainy seasons than the dry seasons; and heavy flooding results in severe outbreaks of diseases known to cause mortality in giraffes, such as anthrax and Rift Valley fever.
It was also found that higher vegetation greenness reduced adult giraffe survival, potentially because faster leaf growth reduces nutrient quality in giraffe food.
Human pressures played a negative role, too. Climate effects were exacerbated by the giraffes’ proximity to the edges of protected reserves, but not during every season. Giraffes living near the peripheries of the protected areas were most vulnerable during heavy, short rains. These conditions likely heighten disease risks associated with livestock, and muddy terrain hampers antipoaching patrols, leading to increased threats to giraffe survival.
Contrary to scientists’ expectations, higher temperatures were found to positively affect adult giraffe survival, while rainier wet seasons negatively impacted both adults and calves. The researchers attributed that to a possible increase in diseases and parasites.
Publishing their study in the science journal Biodiversity and Conservation in June 2023, the Pennsylvania State University and University of Zurich team members concluded that projected climate changes in East Africa—including heavier rainfall during the short rains—will likely threaten the existence of giraffes in one of Earth’s most important landscapes for large mammals, indicating the need for effective antipoaching measures and land-use plans to improve giraffes’ resilience to the coming changes.
Social caring and complexity
Traditionally, giraffes were thought to have little or no social structures and only fleeting, weak relationships. However, in the last 10 years, research has shown that such thinking is erroneous, and giraffe social organization is much more advanced than once thought.
In a paper published in the science journal Mammal Review in January 2022, researchers from England’s University of Bristol demonstrated that giraffes spend up to 30% of their lives in a post-reproductive state. This is comparable to other species with highly complex social structures and cooperative care, such as elephants and orcas, who spend 23% and 35%, respectively, of their lives in a post-reproductive state.
It’s believed that giraffes engage in cooperative parenting and contribute to the shared, parental care of related kin. Giraffes have high-functioning and intricate social systems, potentially comparable to those of cetaceans, chimpanzees and elephants.
In species with highly developed social structures, the presence of postmenopausal females offers survival benefits for related offspring. In mammals—including humans—this is known as the “Grandmother Hypothesis,” which suggests that females live long past menopause so that they can help raise successive generations of offspring, thereby ensuring the preservation of their genes.
The University of Bristol researchers believe that the presence of post-reproductive adult female giraffes functions in the same way. They assert that giraffes are likely to engage in cooperative parenting and contribute to shared, parental care of related kin along matrilines. This means that giraffes are a highly complex social species, with intricate and high-functioning social systems, potentially comparable to cetaceans, chimpanzees and elephants. Hopefully, this work will further our understanding of giraffes’ behavioral ecology and conservation needs.
Big eyes and goodbyes
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies giraffes as a whole as “vulnerable.” But the number of the animals has plummeted dramatically over the past three decades—by up to 40%. Some refer to this as a “silent extinction” because the decline has been slow and has stayed under the radar.
Giraffes have high visual acuity and panoramic peripheral vision, so they can see a lot—even behind themselves. A special arrangement of light-sensing cells allows them to simultaneously look at their feet and a few feet ahead while walking. Color vision allows them to select ripe food and succulent leaves.
But imagine a world without giraffes. There would be no animals whose necks seem to stretch to the sky. No long-legged, knobby-kneed, brown-and-white herbivores to stand on the ground while peacefully grazing the treetops.
And what would we do without those big, brown eyes? Giraffes have the biggest eyeballs of all land mammals; a golf ball of an eye to our ping-pong-ball-sized one.
So, I think, a future without giraffes is unthinkable. Watching them go silently from our world should not be the option we choose.
Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,
Candy
