Stuff You Should Know - How Giraffes Work

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

Even though giraffes are one of the most recognizable animals on the planet, it wasn't until the 21st century that biology really set about studying them. They've found giraffes are even more amazing than they appear. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.

So that makes this Stuff You Should Know. Amazing animal edition. Yes. A special request fulfilled animal edition. Yeah, we should tell the story, huh? Oh, yeah, for sure. There's no way we can not tell the story, because it's the cutest thing that's happened in a long time.

It really is. So we did a show in Vancouver on September something, right? In real time, it was last week for us. We usually don't turn stuff around this fast. Right, exactly. And a lot of times we'll do Q&A after a show, because we're like, the podcast isn't enough. We owe people more than that. So we'll do a Q&A, right?

That's right. And the last question of the night was this cute little girl, just adorable. And her name was Mika, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay, and Mika had a special request. Chuck, and what was it? Well, it kind of went down like this. Mika's dad walks her up to the microphone.

Everyone turns their attention to this adorable six-year-old. And in front of, oh, what, was it like 1,000, 1,200 people, she said, can you do a podcast on giraffes? And 1,200 hearts melted. And immediately, like afterward, you and I were like, well, we're doing this as soon as we get back. Yeah, that's right. And this is where we're at.

We did it. Yeah. And you know what, Mika, you are not alone because giraffes are amazing, as you will see in greater detail, and you are not alone among your peers because I got to tell you as the father of a two-year-old daughter, and Jerry as the mom of a two-year-old, they're all obsessed with giraffes. Yeah, it's true. You and me and I started our niece, Mila, actually off on giraffes pretty early.

Yeah. And like, there's some of the most adorable stuff the animals or toys around, too. So I mean, it's understandable how it would stick in a kid's crawl like that. Well, yeah. I mean, they look nothing like things that they've seen, yet enough like things they've seen, I think, at that age to where they think, well, I've seen a horse or a horse or I've seen a zebra, but I've seen a camel even, and those things look a little weird. But then a giraffe comes along and small minds are blown.

They are blown. So much that I suspect that there are giraffes in the little angel-holding bay where babies stay before they come down here to Earth. And yes, I want to say small minds is not to say children are small-minded. No, no. Like, maybe literally small-minded, but not in the figurative adult sense. Physiologically speaking, there you go. So everybody knows what giraffes are.

You can point to a picture of a giraffe and say, what is this? And the person will say, it's a giraffe. It's a pretty common thing to do. Maybe arguably the best Charlie Harper illustration of all time is the mother and baby giraffe snuggling. I don't know what that is. Look it up. I'll send it to you.

You're going to love it. It's just adorable. So everyone's quite familiar with giraffes, but giraffes are one of those animals that we found from our research are just taken for granted. Yeah. Like, everyone's like, look at those things. They're amazing. But let's just leave it at that, apparently.

Here's how science approached giraffes for millennia, basically. Yeah. In fact, these evolutionary wonders, and boy, aren't they? Like in every sense of the word. For many, many millennia, human dum-dums referred to these animals as camel leopards. Right. With a tidy little hyphen in between the two to really show that they had clearly a camel and a leopard had gotten it on at some point and created the giraffe.

Yeah. Which, I mean, it makes a little bit of sense. They are sort of camel-like with their necks and their kind of long legs and hooves. But then also, you look at a giraffe's coat and that amazing leopard-like pattern. So it sort of makes sense that human dum-dums would say stuff like that. Right. Because they didn't understand evolution. And even Mr. Evolution himself, Charles Darwin, was like, I'm not even getting into the giraffe

for a while. Right? The giraffe debate. Yeah. So he started waiting into where the giraffe got its neck. Because by the time Darwin came along, they'd said, okay, they're not camel leopards. We know that much, right? Everybody stop making fun of us.

Right. But also, let's give it a scientific name, Giraffa Camelopardalis. Yeah. Which is a nod to the dum-dums of yore. That's right. Right? So by the time Darwin got in on this, he had written on the origin of the species. But it was the sixth edition before the giraffe makes an appearance in it.

Yeah. I'm sure Mika has already read that. Sure. Yeah. That's why she was asking. She was hoping we could expound on that. That's right. So Darwin suggested that potentially the giraffe's neck evolved because in times of

drought or famine where other animals were starving and dropping like flies, the giraffe's neck gave it an advantage to reach leaves on trees that other animals couldn't. So it was quite literally rising above the competition, natural selection wise, right? Yeah. That's got to be it. Right? Well, one of the issues that's raised against it is that giraffes still feed at the same level as other animals, like a pretty significant amount of the time.

Well, they're discreet. I guess so. They're like some for me and I'll have some of yours too. Yeah. I don't know. I can't think of any other reason. It makes complete sense. Well, there's another guy, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was pretty credible as far as old-timey

scientists go. And Lamarck said, I think they're an antelope that just stretched its neck further and further and further. Yeah. And he lost all credibility. Yeah. I think so. But they're not entirely certain what precisely it is that gave the giraffe its neck because

you don't see that elsewhere in nature. It's not an adaptation that is pretty common, like eyes or hearing or flight. It's its own thing in a lot of ways. But there are some other long-neck animals like swans or something like that. But giraffes are mammals and aside from that really long neck and a couple of other things that they've had to change or adapt to because of their long neck and other features, they're nothing like other long-necked animals. Yeah, that's right.

In the long-neck club, they stand alone. Exactly. All right. Let's start with classification and taxonomy and that kind of thing because that lays the groundwork for what we're talking about here. Technically speaking, giraffes are what you would call an even-toed ungulate, which is kind of a fancy way of saying they have just two weight-bearing hooves on each foot like a camel.

Isn't that right? Yeah, I believe so. Not a leopard, though. No. A leopard with hooves would not be a much of a leopard. Let's be honest. They are in an order called artyodactyla and that does include the antelope, to be fair, but also includes things like sheep and moose and hippos, cows, pigs, a little weirdly,

but maybe not because they have the little hooves. What else? So, their family is giraffeidae and in the giraffeidae family, there's two genera, right? Yes. There's the giraffeagenus and the ocopia genus and they split, they think, now about 11 million years ago. And still today, you can walk around in Africa and find the ocopy, but the ocopy looks way more like it's related to a horse or a zebra than it does to a giraffe, right?

Yeah. I've seen them before. They're pretty neat. They're like chocolate colored with zebra striped legs. Yeah. It literally looks like it's an animal that said, I don't know what I want to be. I like you guys. I like you guys.

So I really would just like to sort of be both of you. Right. It's a social butterfly. Yeah. It's a very pretty animal. And then over in the giraffeagenus, there's basically one species as far as anyone's concerned. So like any giraffe you ever see, even if it looks different from all the other giraffes you see, it was the species giraffeocamalapardalis, like you said, right?

Yes. But there's a 2016 study that was carried out by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. And it was published in the journal Current Biology. And they said, you know, all these little subspecies that we've been saying are actually the same species of giraffes, there's just variations. They're actually different species. There's four giraffe species. Yeah.

But that's not like that study was just last year. And now they're saying that that's not the case. So, uh... Oh, is that right? Well, isn't that what it says? It said, uh... Well, I think it's more like the wheels of biological science as if academic field moves slowly.

Okay. So their findings are supposedly legitimate. But they're just not saying they didn't put the stamp of authenticity on it. Not yet. Okay. They probably will in the future. But they're like, just give us some time. We just made some tea.

As scientists are one to do. Sure. Uh, Celeste, do you want to take a break? Oh, sure. All right. We'll take a break and crane our necks up and get some food to sustain ourselves and then talk a little bit about these awesome, awesome necks right after this. Hey, everybody.

When you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca.host.

On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? Also leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing

on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay Chuck, so there was not a lot of study in the field of giraffes. Everybody was just like, that's neat, giraffes are cool, let's just leave it at that. Especially in the field specifically, like out in their natural habitat, they weren't really killed by poachers, but not necessarily studied, right? So most of the understanding we had of giraffes was of captive giraffes that were being held

hostage in zoos, right? But from those, we got a pretty decent amount of, at least, anatomical understanding of them. Yeah, and I mean, you just have to add this to the list of the jellyfish and the octopus. What bats? What else are we forgetting? Oh man, there was one other one that we did. We did one recently.

I guess frogs? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Like all animals. Yeah, any animal we cover, we find fascinating. You notice we haven't done one on the common house cat? No. We probably should though, because I'm a cat lover.

I feel like that would be like doing an episode on gamers, like just inviting trouble, you know what I mean? Well, yeah. I mean, I love cats. I do, but I just don't know that it's like in the same category as an octopus when it comes to amazement and astonishment. That's true. You know?

Although we did speak about them for a while in the, what was it, domestic animals episode? Did we? Yeah, I think so. You spoke on, and of course, Toxoplasmosis. Oh yeah. Reared its ugly head. Yeah. All right.

Mika's like, get back to it guys. Right. I don't really care about that stuff. I hate cats. So they are the tallest living animal in the world, and it says in here, and this is kind of reminded me of something, that a giraffe can look in a second story window. And I just saw recently, I had no idea this existed, but giraffe manor in Nairobi, there are, this is a hotel, and it is a, it's a, what do you call it, not a, I mean, they work

with conservation, but. An eco lodge? Well, I guess it's that too, but it's, I can't think of the right name, but what it is, it's a hotel, and they work to help giraffes that are in trouble, and help to reintroduce troubled giraffes into the wild. It's like a home for juvenile delinquent giraffes. Yeah, and like a rehabilitation center. And I just saw this for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and there are pictures of people

dining and eating in a second story window, and giraffes sticking their heads right through them, and eating fruit off a plate, and people just thinking, I'm getting cheated out on my breakfast, and it's the best time I can remember that happening. Yeah. So it's amazing. And now I want to, like I think Emily and I are going to try and go on a safari. So we're dying to go on a safari. I just need to find out a good one that's like ecologically sound, and I don't know anything

about safari. I don't know if they're like bad, or they're good, or if they're good ones and bad ones, but I'm going to check it out, and we're definitely going to go stay in that hotel. The first question I think you want to ask of a safari operator is, do you use cattle prods? Yeah. That's a big one. Does it look like that?

Oh, I'm sure some people do for sure. Yeah. And hey, if anyone knows of like a really sustainable, well done safari, let me know. Sure. We're in the market. So what is it called, giraffe manor? Yeah. Okay.

So yeah, they can, they are just super tall, and the reason why they're super tall is there's two reasons. One is obviously their neck. Their neck alone is like six feet long, right? Yes. And again, there are other long-necked animals out there in nature like swans, but giraffes are mammals, and they have the same number of cervical vertebrae that other mammals do.

They're just really big cervical vertebrae, right? So each vertebra of a giraffe's neck is about 11 inches in length. That's crazy. And there's seven of them, and you put them all together, and you got about a six-foot-long neck. Yes. But they also have really long legs, too, that are also about six feet long. Yeah.

So six-foot-long legs, six-foot-long neck, and you have giraffes, female, because they still have other body parts. Males can grow up to 14 feet, weigh about 1,500 pounds, and males can grow up to 18 feet tall and weigh about 3,000 pounds. Yeah. For males, it's like five and a half meters tall and 1,360 kilograms. So they're big animals, but they're also known as gentle giants, too. They're not very violent animals, as we see.

True. Although, if you're into the sweet giraffe, do not look up videos of male giraffes fighting. I know it's disturbing. It is very disturbing, and you just want to think, like, oh, man, you guys should just always like each other. Yeah. Like, why do friends fight? Pretty much.

Yeah. So, part of being tall like this, it presents some amazing evolutionary traits and some challenges that, thankfully, the giraffe has overcome. They have – let's talk about their nerve cells. If you've got a neck that long, you're going to – everything is just stretched out. So there, for instance, they're recurrent laryngeal nerve, which this activates their larynx, helps them in swallowing, because they're going to need a little help swallowing down that long neck.

That thing is 15 feet long in itself because it starts in the brain, goes down the neck, and then loops back up to the throat. Right. And we have one of those, too, and it's actually pointed to as proof that it's evolution, not creation, that accounts for us because it's just such a poor workaround. Yeah. But it's 15 feet long in giraffes. Crazy.

Right? So, since it's a nerve fiber, nerve fibers are made of bundled nerve cells. So that means that if you separated these things, it'd be made up of 15-foot-long cells. Yeah. That's nuts. It really is. Is that your fact of the show? There's about 50 of those in here, I think.

I think you're right. Yeah. So, if you've ever been to a wildlife refuge, that's the word I was thinking of. Oh, okay. Or a zoo, let's say, and you've seen a giraffe up close and personal. The one thing that you will notice, and some zoos will even have times a day where you can feed the giraffes, which is pretty amazing, but the first thing you'll probably notice aside from their neck when they get up face-to-face is, aside from their friendly eyes, is the

size of their tongue when they go licking stuff, and they have a very active tongue that things are always moving around, it seems like. But these tongues are almost two feet long. They can be 21 inches in length. Yes. And not only are they long, they're also prehensile. They have the ability to grasp things, as we'll see later, right? That's right.

So they have enormous tongues. They have feet that are about a foot across, about a third of a meter across, right? And they're hearts, Chuck. I think this might be the fact of the show for me. We'll take it. Well, their hearts, if you talk about a giraffe as a big-hearted animal, you can say that in every sense of the word, because the heart of a giraffe is two feet long and weighs about 25 pounds, which, Mika, for you, that's 11 kilograms.

That's right. So they have this huge heart, and you're like, well, of course they have a huge heart. You dummy, it's a huge animal. That's true, but prepare for this. If you did, based on body mass, proportionately, a giraffe's organs, like its heart or its lungs, that can take in an enormous amount of air at one time. 12 gallons. Right.

They're average. Yeah. They're just about average in size, right? So the giraffe is actually faced with a couple of issues here, right? Sure. If its heart is proportionately speaking normal size, but its neck is way longer than other mammals, it has an issue, and its legs are way longer than other animals, it has a secondary issue, right?

So you would think, well, it needs a huge heart, and again, though, its heart is not proportionately up to the task. So there's been other adaptations that the giraffe underwent over time to allow for it to not say faint when it suddenly lifts its head up after drinking water or for blood not to collect in pool in its legs. Yeah. It's amazing. So the way this works is the heart of a giraffe is really, really thick.

So it has a very thick wall, and so that means it can pump blood at a super high pressure about five times that of a human heart. So that sort of solves that problem. It gets blood going where it needs to go as effectively as possible. And then they have a really tough coat and a tough hide. And the way this article put it is it sort of acts like a compression sock, but around the whole body. So that basically just helps the blood counteract the gravity of pumping all the way up that

long neck to the brain. Right. Exactly. It keeps it from just like, it keeps it also from collecting or pooling in places it shouldn't. It just keeps everything running smoothly. Yeah, like those big feet. Yeah. So it's pretty interesting stuff, right?

Agreed. And you were talking about the coat as well. One thing I saw in research is that the giraffe's coat is unique to the individual, like our fingerprint or iris print is. Yeah. Which I hadn't really thought about, which makes total sense, you know. Giraffes are all unique individual little flowers. Snowflakes, if you will.

Sure. Just good giant liberal mammals. Mika, you can ask your dad about that joke. So when you look at a giraffe, you might think like, well, yeah, giraffes, they all just sort of have the, maybe it's unique, but the patterns are all basically the same. Not exactly true. Depending on where the giraffe lives and what they eat, they're going to have a different sort of pattern going on, and then each one is unique into itself.

So in Kenya, the, I'm going to call it a Masai giraffe, they have the pattern that look like the oak leaves. Very, very pretty pattern. Right. And then there's Uganda giraffes. They have like big, large, brown splotches with lines, like lighter brown lines separating the splotches. Like a giraffe.

That's the one you think of, or I think of when I think giraffes. I think of all of them as giraffes. Then there's the reticulated giraffe, and this is only in northern Kenya, evidently. These have the darker coat, and it looks like it really narrow white lines all over the place. But with all these, it's kind of like, what are you looking at? Are you looking at the spots or the lines in between? Sure. Yeah.

It's like an optical illusion. And the whole reason that the giraffes hide or coat looks like that is because it's camouflage. Like they're so big, there's really no way for them to hide anywhere. So they hide in plain sight by blending in with the trees that they eat. That's right. Yeah. There is also, Chuck, I don't know if you saw this or not, but in Kenya, again, at the Ishak Bini Herola Conservancy, they found two all-white giraffes, head to toe, white.

I think I've seen those. Yeah. I think they kind of became like an internet hit recently. And they say that they're not albino giraffes. There's like a lesser condition called leucism, which really just kind of affects the skin and hair and coat, but not like, say, the eyes or anything like that. But it's really cute. It's a mom and her baby, and they're being watched probably more than other giraffes.

So the mom's kind of like, you stay here behind the bushes, okay? I'm going to handle the photographs, but it's just cute to watch them. I love watching giraffes at all times. At all times? Mm-hmm. Do you have giraffe cam? I'm watching some right now. Are they outside of our studio?

Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. How wonderful would that be? You can't see them. They're looking over your shoulder right now. I know. I have my back to the door. So giraffes live in what are called savannas through sub-Saharan Africa.

And the weather there is semi-arid. They like woodlands that are sort of open, that have smatterings of trees and bushes. And that's really kind of the best habitat for giraffes. Right. And lastly, Chuck, their eyes, right? You said that their eyes are adorable and that's largely because of their wonderful eyelashes. But they also have really large eyes and maybe among the better vision of any land animals, their peripheral vision is so good they can almost see behind them.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. And they can see in color. They can see it long, long way in front of them. And like you said, those wide-angle lens eyeballs, and they're huge, is really handy because giraffes basically lion see giraffes and they think, all right, I know no one likes to see this kind of thing on television or on nature shows, but we have to eat, too. And they make for good eating if you're a lion or let's say a crocodile.

Right. Aside from humans, that's basically it, hyenas prey on giraffe calves, but they don't have that many predators. Yeah. Well, which is great because they need more giraffes. Yeah. And they also don't have a lot of recourse against predators. They can kick, as we'll see, but there's not a lot they can do besides run away.

But even when they run, despite their lungs being so big, they don't oxygenate their bodies well enough that they can run for very long distances. So they can run fast and short bursts, but being camouflaged and being so huge and high off the ground that their predators can't actually reach them easily, that's really how they survive. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's take one. All right.

Hey, friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guesthouse of her childhood home, now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so you were talking about giraffes running fast, they can run about 35 miles an hour for our Canadian friends, and certainly for Mika, that's 56 kilometers. We don't often do those conversions anymore. Well, we don't usually have an episode requested by a cute little Canadian. That's correct, although you could make the argument that all Canadians are cute. Sure, right?

Nice, at the very least. So have you ever seen a giraffe run in person? I don't know that I have. You know that thing when you start to get older, Chuck, where your brain has been around long enough that it can just make up memories, and you don't know if you actually experienced it, or if your brain's like, this is what that person just asked would look like. So just go ahead and say yes. That's what I just did.

I'm not sure if I have or not, but at the very least, I've seen it on TV and can imagine it. All right, so I know we did an episode on zoos, and whether or not zoos are good or bad, and I sort of still haven't completely made up my mind on zoos, but I know you have. You're on record. But I went to the San Diego Zoo when we did a tour show there a couple of years ago, and they have a giraffe habitat, a very nice one, and they had some giraffes walking around doing cute stuff, and then one of them, I don't know where, took off and started running.

And it was the most graceful thing I've probably ever seen in nature that didn't involve wings and flying. Oh, wow. It was unbelievable. Like, you can look it up on YouTube, giraffes running, but... So like banjo music wouldn't have been appropriate? No. No, no, no.

It's just they just sort of glide, man, and they're so big, and their necks are going forward and backward, kind of like they're cranking it out with their neck, and then their legs, it almost seems like they're not touching the ground. It's not like a... It's a gallop, but it's hard to explain. Like when you see a horse gallop, you feel like they're grabbing that ground, and it's very just strong looking, but a giraffe just sort of glides. It's for such a big animal, and that might have something to do with the optics of it.

But it's just something to see. Well they also, the way that they move their legs is kind of peculiar as well. I think when they're running, it's front legs and then back legs and front legs and then back legs, if I'm not mistaken. But then when they're moving along at a slower speed, they're moving like right side legs, left side legs, right side legs, left side legs. So it's not like one at a time. It's a bizarre way to walk around, yet another amazing thing about giraffes.

All right, so one of our favorite things are groups of animals, names of groups of animals, like a murder of crows and where they get these crazy names. In giraffes, I never knew until today, a group of giraffes is called a tower. I didn't know that either. Really neat. So giraffes, it's long been known they're social animals. They live in packs, but again... Yeah, they live in towers.

They live in towers. I'm sorry. But since they weren't really studied out in the field, everything that they noticed about giraffe sociality was basically in zoos and that's an artificial habitat, right? So they didn't get to see the real giraffes, but now that they've really started to study them out in the field systematically and really scientifically, they're finding that giraffes are even more social than they thought. Yeah, and they're also sort of like a liberal hippie commune.

A tower can have 10 to 20 members, but it's not like a lot of packs or murders or gaggles where you have like, well, the women and the children are here and the men do this. It's sort of anything goes. There can be mixed genders. They can be young and old. Members can come and go as they please. They don't necessarily stick together for life. This just seems like sort of a loose arrangement where giraffes will be like, all right, I'm

cool to hang out with you guys for a little while. Right, exactly. And the other thing that struck me, too, was that giraffe towers don't have territories, which I don't, I can't think of any other mammals off the top of my head that don't protect their turf. So apparently when giraffes do fight, male giraffes do fight, it's strictly over access to the ladies. Oh, well.

But that's it. It's not like, hey, get out of here. This is my acacia tree. Right. You know? True. I just think that's neat. There's no territories.

It's like, go wherever you want, man. Yeah. Very chill. This is one of the other big facts of the show for me. So giraffes, one of their evolutionary adaptations is because they are so vulnerable to attack because they eat like what, 16 to 20 hours a day. And they're just hanging out, eating, trying to all get along. Lions are nearby.

So they don't sleep for hours at a time because they're so vulnerable to attack. So they sleep. They only sleep about five to 30 minutes a day in a 24-hour period. And sometimes those are like, all right, I'm going to stand here and I'm going to take a one-minute nap standing up. Right. Or maybe, well, I'm super tired, I need to lay down for six minutes. And so just Google a picture of giraffe sleeping on the ground and you will see a giraffe

curled up with its long neck kind of craning back towards this rump with his little head on his butt. Like a swan. Yeah. It's just adorable. Yeah. Momo, my dog, she takes naps like a giraffe with her head up or like a really old person or like she's sort of like nod off and then like lifts her head up.

Yeah. It's really, it's cute to see. Yeah. So, you know, a giraffe basically has to stay awake to keep an eye out for predators. And they don't have a voice either. They're one of the quietest mammals in nature. Yeah. A lot of people think or thought for a very long time that giraffes just didn't make

sounds because it's so rare to hear them make a sound. But again, further studies found that they do make sounds. They just very infrequently do. And they also think that potentially giraffes communicate to one another over long distances at subsonic frequencies that humans just can't hear. Right. So they may be, you know, humming. And there's actually, there's a recording of a giraffe humming to itself in the dark

in a zoo. Wow. It's really sweet to hear. And if you think of a giraffe by itself in the dark in a zoo and it's humming, it makes you wonder why it's humming like that. Yeah. I mean, if you're around a giraffe, what you might hear, if you're lucky, is like a snort or maybe a hiss or a grunt.

Probably won't hear any roaring or mooing, although they can do that. But the idea I've got is that they just don't care to talk to people much, you know? Yeah. So one thing with the snort in particular, if you do hear a giraffe snort, it means that it's spooked and it's saying, oh my gosh, basically, as it's running away. But it's also alerting its fellow giraffes as well. And apparently giraffes are easily spooked enough that they're kind of like an early warning signal for the other animals on the savannah that they've spotted a lion.

So they're easily spooked that they also can see really, really well over very long distances. And because of that height advantage, they can see even further. So if a giraffe starts running, the other animals are like, I'm out too. Well, yeah, not only that, and this is so cool. I love it when animals work together like that, but it goes even deeper. If you look up tick bird on giraffe, just Google that stuff, you're going to see a giraffe hanging out with these little birds all over its back and neck. And they're buddies, they have a symbiotic relationship.

And what happens is the tick bird, or it's called an oxpecker because they do this on other animals as well, but they basically sit on top of these animals and they eat bugs in the coat. They kind of pick their nits and they warn the giraffe. Like they might see a lion and make their noise. I don't know what it sounds like. All right, they'll do that. And then the giraffe in turn snorts and takes off.

So in a sense, the tick bird is sort of warning everyone on the Savannah that the lion is coming around. Poor lions. They get such a bad rep. Yeah. Yeah. But they got to eat. It's just true.

It's just one of those things. It's the circle of life. It is. Nobody likes seeing a lion chowing down on an antelope or running after a family of antelopes. Right. They like to see lions and alligators or crocodiles fight each other. Yeah. Because then it's a fair fight.

Sure. You know what I'm talking about? But we did talk about the giraffes fighting each other for the ladies and they do this with those ossicons. You know, when you look, I guess you might want to call them horns, but they're called ossicons. The two, and it's not always two, don't they have more than that sometimes? So no, they'll have two ossicons, but then they get these calcium deposits to protect

against the headbutts and it looks like they have more horns. It's like you're kind of showing off at that point. Yeah. You really went a little far with the horns, man. So they, as the giraffe matures too, they'll have that little kind of tufted hair, patch of hair at the top and that starts to fade a little bit as it's replaced by the calcium deposits. Yeah.

The neck gets strong and upright and everything and apparently young giraffes become, young male giraffes become young men like giraffes as they're growing up by emulating the giraffes that they see in real life. And they'll act like they're tough or whatever and go like, you know, pull the girl's hair or something like that. And then when the actual like adult male giraffes, the bulls are what they call come around, the kids just suddenly just go back to being little kids like, nothing, nothing, I wasn't doing anything, but they're almost practiced at first by emulating their grown-ups.

Yeah, it's pretty neat. Like you said, the males are called bulls, the females are called cows, calves are what they have when they make a little baby. And when they mate, the cow has a gestation period of about 14 months and then you can look up on YouTube and see a video of a calf being born and it is something else to see because a six-foot-tall, 150-pound giraffe, which is tiny by their standards, will kind of be pooped out of the back of the mom giraffe while the mom's just standing there. It'll flump and fall on the ground like a little lump, which is all cute and sort of

amazing looking. And then like a bunch of really other gross stuff comes out. That's what you need to be just aware of if you watch this video. You can just stop it there is what I would recommend, but there's a lot of afterbirth. There's one thing you know when you're a young giraffe is don't look up. Yeah. Never look up. Yeah.

And while you're on YouTube, go look at baby giraffe learning to stand and walk because it's amazing. They do it really quickly, about an hour later. But as with any mammal's first steps, it's one of the most adorable things you can witness. It's a little shaky. Little shaky. Yeah. But instead of taking months or however long it takes for human babies to learn to walk,

an hour is all it takes. And one reason, probably the reason why giraffes can walk that quickly after being born is because they are huge targets for predators out on the savanna. Yeah. It's like super sad. Only about one in four infant giraffes survived that first year. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's a big milestone in a giraffe's life.

I would say so. Because you made it to your first year and after that, you're starting to grow to the point where I think by age three to six, they're fully mature. So if you make it to your first year, you're going to be able to survive probably longer and longer. Your chances of survival increase tremendously just because of the size you're getting to. But making it to that first year is very tough. And it's at that first year also that they wean.

I think they nurse for like the first year and then start eating leaves after that. Yeah. And so for many years, they thought that momma giraffes might be a little cold-hearted because a lot of times they would see the momma giraffe leave the calf behind for this very vulnerable young calf for extended periods. But what they now think, thankfully, is that the momma giraffes are just, they're not neglected at all. They're really social and they're going out to look for food and stuff.

And the job of the baby calf is to just lay down sometimes for a whole day and be as quiet as possible until momma returns and momma will return. Right. But that seems to me is, that's probably one of the reasons why the mortality rate is so high among giraffe calves is that their mothers leave them and they just are expected to lay there quietly on the savanna until they return a day later. Yeah. But they do.

Like the other, I mean, the only other thing they could do is walk around with mom, which makes them more vulnerable. Yeah. I guess that's a good point. You know? Yeah. So the momma basically says, you hide here. Be quiet.

I know you want to run and play and you might want to snort, but there's bad things out there. Yeah. There's angry lions and so I'll be back. Trust me. Yeah. So they, like you said, they do come back, but because of that, I think you said the scientists for a long time thought, pshh, what's wrong with giraffe moms are the worst

of the worst, right? But they have found again through recent study that no, giraffes actually seem to demonstrate grief, like prolonged grief even, when they lose a calf. And there was one mother giraffe who lost a calf to a predator and stayed at that spot for four days and didn't eat anything and was actually consoled. It appeared by two other female giraffes who were friends. So they are not neglectful, cold-hearted, they're not like Joan Crawford's of the animal kingdom.

No. I told Emily that fact this morning and she'd literally like started crying. All right, so we mentioned that they eat plants. That is exclusively giraffes or herbivores, mica, so that means they only eat plants, they don't eat meat. And what they really like to chow down on, they eat seeds, they eat fruits and branches and things, but they really love our mimosa trees and especially acacia trees. That is what their main meals consist of.

Right. And again, they kind of look like these things that they're eating, at least in their camouflage pattern and because their tongue is prehensile, meaning it can go grasp stuff, they are able to kind of circumnavigate like the thorns that are part of acacia trees and mimosa trees and just kind of pluck these great leaves without getting stuck by the thorns. And their lips are also prehensile too, so it's like on their face, around their mouth, they have two hands that are just going to town sorting through these trees and eating the leaves off of them.

Yeah, I think that's why when you see a giraffe, they have so much personality, it's because that mouth. Yeah, I think that's part of it. Also those eyelashes are not hurting things at all. It's very, very expressive. So for their size, they eat hundreds of pounds of leaves a week, which you think like, man, that's a lot of leaves, but for their size, that's not a lot of food. They have a very efficient internal system.

Sometimes they can live on as little as 15 pounds of foliage per day, which isn't a lot of food for an animal that can weigh up to 1500 pounds. Right, yeah, it's like 7 kilograms for our Canadian friends, or the rest of the world except for Liberia. What's the deal with the cud? So they're ruminants, right, like a cow, and that means that they eat their leaves or flowers or whatever they're eating, and then it passes through four different chambers of their stomach, and then it comes all the way back up through their stomach, all the way back up their neck

into their mouth. Basically they throw up the leaves that have now been turned into cud, and then they chew on that some more, and then swallow it again. That makes them a ruminant. And actually, I believe it makes them kosher as well. Oh, really? Yeah, I saw that somewhere. It does not mean that you should go eat giraffes though.

No. What's wrong with people? And then finally, their wonderful adaptation that I think is one of the best is because they're out there in the dry, sub-Saharan Africa, there's not a ton of water around, and certainly a giraffe leaning down in drinking water could be very vulnerable, especially to a crocodile. They can go weeks at a time without drinking, and they get most of their water and the moisture that they need to survive from those plants that they're eating.

Yeah, it's pretty astounding. Amazing. So because they're doing all of this eating of tree tops and all of that, not just the tree tops, but just about anywhere on the tree they'll eat from it, they're actually doing a lot of other things too. And usually herbivores, they play some pretty good role in their ecosystem, but giraffes seem to be really integral to their ecosystems as well, just because of their really long neck and their reaching places that other animals can't reach.

So they have a big impact on the ecosystem as far as keeping it healthy and running smoothly, basically. Yeah, it's kind of like bringing a wildlife management pruning system in there. Right. They're 15, 18 feet tall, and while they're eating, they're distributing seeds all over the place. Pooping. Yeah, pooping out those seeds.

So they can serve as pollinators even. Yeah. Pretty amazing. The little acacia tree seeds go, thanks a lot for the ride. That's right. As far as their conservation status, they're not endangered, which is good news. Yeah, but are they not? I mean, just think about this.

I don't know. Over the past 15 years, they've declined by 40% to around 80,000 from 140,000, which is a troubling number to me for sure. I just don't know exactly what it takes to become endangered. I don't either, but most of that loss of the giraffes, 15 years, they lost maybe 60,000 out of 140,000 giraffes are gone now, mostly due to poachers or, yeah, boo. So maybe boo's of all boo's go to the poachers. And then their ecosystem, their habitat is being lost because trees are being cut down

for everything from developments to cropland. Boo again. And if they don't have their, well, we kind of do need cropland, but yes, agreed. When it affects giraffes like that, boo. But even beyond that, apparently the giraffe's tail is used for all sorts of stupid stuff. They, frankly, you don't need to kill a giraffe for. You can just, if you really need the tail hair, just cut the tail off. You know, like if you're going to do that, at least don't kill the giraffe first.

Maybe sedate it and surgically remove it or something, but geez. Yeah. I wouldn't even go that far. Well, sure. Right. But don't remove the tail. Yeah. You can make a fly whisk or a bracelet out of something else.

Exactly. But that's what they use them for, bracelets and fly whisks. And because of all this bad stuff, Mika, you'll be glad to know that June 21 has been declared World Giraffe Day. It is the longest day of the year and they have awarded that day to the tallest animal. So now there are, there's a lot of awareness going on and efforts underway and a lot more studying than has ever been done before to help preserve the future success of the giraffe. Yep.

Thankfully. Yeah. Oh, and I also want to go on record, yes. We realized that fly spread disease in Africa and that fly whisks are actually pretty valuable. Like Chuck said, you can make fly whisks out of other stuff. And maybe it's incumbent upon some of us here in the West to make sure that the people who need the fly whisks in Africa get the synthetic ones so that the giraffes are left out of the loop there.

How about that? I think that sounds great. So, you got anything else right now? I have nothing else. All right. Well, there's giraffes. Mika, thanks for the idea. And since I said thanks, it's time for Chuck.

Yes, that is correct. Administrative details. Okay, everyone. Administrative details. If you are new to the show, it is a segment wherein we thank listeners for the really neat, wonderful things that they send us. That's one of the great things about doing what we do is people are kindhearted and loving and will send us stuff.

Agreed. So, let's start, Chuck. All right. First on the list, because we forgot him last time, our old buddy Greg Storkin came to see us in Denver, Colorado, right? I think so, yeah. And he sent us some whiskey and Greg, you are one of our longtime listeners and man, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for sticking with us and for the whiskey.

Yes, and Chuck, there's another one that, yeah, thank you, Greg. There's another one we missed last time too, Lucas and the rest of the crew from Penelope, which is a charming restaurant at Lexington and 30th in Manhattan. They sent us a wonderful care package of stuff from Penelope, so thank you guys finally at long last for that. That's right, and speaking of whiskey, might as well go ahead and shout out our buddies from the Greatest Generation podcast, Adam Pranicka and Ben Harrison. If you don't listen to that show, it's really good.

If you're a Star Trek next generation fan or even if you're not, that's the best thing going for you. And they sent us some, what was it, Woodhouse Whiskey from Brooklyn? Yeah, it was good stuff. Oh, did you already dive into that? Oh, it's long gone. Okay. Let's see, how about Tim Lazaroff sent us a bunch of Wegmans Organic Ketchup?

Thanks a lot, Tim. He also griped on email that we hadn't thanked him, so Tim, hold your horses. Tessie's Old Oddities. They sent us toddler gifts and dog gifts, which we always appreciate. Little bat costumes and dolls for bat conservation. Yes. It's very, very cute. I put it in my daughter's room and she loved it.

Yes, thank you for that. And Mano got a costume, right? Yes, she did. She looks adorable in it, too. I need to post a picture of it, so you should. Totally. But I'm afraid that somebody will kidnap her. Well, yeah, then don't do that.

So I have a correction also from last time. We thanked Matt Drager for sending his homebrew beer, but we hadn't tried it yet. Remember it turned out to be Kahlua. He made homemade Kahlua. What? Yeah. Don't you remember? It's amazing.

I don't remember that. I don't know if I had that. Oh, it's good. It's in that green bottle that Jonathan Strickland's face is on. Sarah Lopez, big thanks. She sent from Scandalous Scarves, sent scarves for our wives after we made fun of Infinity Scarves on our live show, right? Yeah, with somebody wearing an Infinity Scarf right there.

It was uncomfortable. Thanks a million to Christina, who gave us freestyle embroidered sampler portraits of us at the Chicago show. You remember? Yes. They were amazing. Shot Tower Jinn, we love our gifts of spirits. Oh, yes.

So Shot Tower Jinn, I cannot remember the person, and I feel terrible about that. Big shout out to Shot Tower Jinn. Yeah. Yeah, do write in and let us know so we can thank you a second time. Thanks to Robin at Mother Dirt for sending us all the great skincare stuff. It's much appreciated and well received. Thank to Ben, and I could not read the spelling. It's either clerk or cloak.

He sent us a very cool and solvable, very key for a maze, a stuff you should know maze, and I've never tried to design a maze, so it was pretty neat seeing that. Yep. Let's see. Cody Deet sent us a copy of his book, Spheria, and also while I'm on it, John M. Hamilton sent us a copy of his book, A Hell Called Ohio. He thought I would appreciate that in particular. Argentina Koi invited us to her wedding, to Dustin Nottage, so we could not come, but

we always appreciate wedding invites. Yes, Daria from Happy Socks in Sweden, I had no idea that Happy Socks was out of Sweden, but she sent us a bunch of Happy Socks appropriately enough and they're awesome. Yeah, you love your Happy Socks. Yes, I do. Mr. Jack Ramsey sent us his graphic novel called Skit City, and this thing is awesome. Look up Skit City online, SKIT City, and it's really, really great. Yep, and Brigitte for the cutout drawing of me with my Lovecraft book, I love that.

That was very cool. Yeah. Who else do we have here? Now I thought it would be Rebecca, but I swear it was an N, so I'm going with Renika Morshell, sent us her young adult time travel novel, The Mender, M-E-N-D-E-R, check that out. Yep. And you want to save the rest for the next episode? Yeah, we're going to continue this with a part two.

How about that? All right, let's do it. So in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast or Josh M. Clark, and hang out with us on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email, the Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks.com, and always hang out with us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Get a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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