Why giraffes have long neck

You should say happy b-day. Emmz Mar 1, Hello Wonderopolis! I would like to ask a favor. I suffer from milk allergies. Could you do a wonder to educate others about it? I was also wondering could you make a small donation to FAAN a reasearch team for finding a cure. It would really mean a lot to me and others. Thanks, Emmz. Wonderopolis Mar 1, Food Allergy Girl Mar 1, I loved this wonder.

I wanted to ask you a quick question. Can you do a wonder about milk allergies? I suffer every day with them. You changed my life with the peanut allergy wonder. I am keeping the faith. Dear wonderoplis. Thanks for saying I rock. You and your website rock, too. Ella :. Gallagher Gang Mar 1, We have just been introduced to this exciting website.

Thanks for sharing all these wonders with us. We are learning a lot. Here are our predictions about tomorrow's wonder: Cat: A cat got your tongue! Anteater: We liked someone els'se idea that they might get their tongue stuck in a knot. AP Mar 1, Giraffes are cool.

They have really long necks. Now I really want to go to the zoo and see the giraffes. Daniel Mar 1, How big can a Giraffe get. What is the tallest Giraffe on record. Blevins' Class Mar 1, Our class was surprised that giraffes aren't as smart as other animals. It's crazy that when giraffes are born they are as tall as an average adult. We also didn't know that they have the highest blood pressure of all animals and the deadliest kick.

The video was funny. Those tongues were so long! Jonathan Mar 1, I wish I was a giraffe so that I could have a long neck! Dear wonderopolis. I was wondering the same thing, but I know Kennedy'a Class Mar 1, Dear Wonderopolis, Our class from Room liked the giraffe video. Can you please find a video to explain why giraffes have such long tongues?

The giraffes were so cute! Are they really as "dumb as a sack of hammers"? The video was funny--our entire class loved it. Have a great day! Kids in Room PS-Ella logs onto Wonderopolis each morning before school and she posts her own comment! She loves this site! So do we! Mar 1, Here are some of our thoughts and questions about giraffes: 1.

How do they get so tall? How much do they grow in a year? About how much food do they eat in a meal? How high can they get? What kind of leaves do they eat? What do they eat in the winter? How much food does a older giraffe eat? How do you tell the difference between a male and a female giraffe? How are baby giraffes born? How can you tell how old they are? Here are some predictions about tomorrow's Wonder of the Day: 1. The tongue twister "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

A monkey 3. I love giraffes. That is the second animal I love. Sydney Mar 1, Okay, so I kinda don't get it. If they just use their long necks to fight, what else do they use it for? They also use them for food to eat leaves off of trees, couldn't they?

Thats why I thought they had long necks Oh, I get why they called it a competition now, because they live with a lot of other animals, shorter animals and they have to eat so.. I get it Ella Mar 1, Hi, wonderopolis. I am from room I liked all your videos. Your website is awesome. Austin Cannaday Mar 1, Hey, guys. I never knew that Giraffes had only two predators. I thought they had like 20 or at least Like maybe a Jaguar or a Mountain Lion.

Well, for the Mountain lio,n there are two theories. One, the Giraffe could wander off into the Mountains. Two, the Mountain Lion could run out of food and wander off into the habitat where the Giraffes live.

But, anyway, I have to go. Maybe I will comment today again if I get the chance. Cassidy Mar 1, I think that giraffes are cool because they have really long necks and they have spots on them that make them look cool. I've always wondered what it would be like to be a giraffe for a day or two. I think that it would be cool. Although I don't think that I would really want to be a giraffe, because I don't want to be eaten by a lion or a crocodile.

Mark Mar 1, Adel Mar 1, I was glad to learn that a baby giraffe is really tall. They are five to six feet tall, and that's only when they are born. Can't wait until tomorrow's wonder!!!!

Thanks Adel!!!!!!! Melissa Mar 1, Madalyn was so excited to see today's wonder. She brought home an "N" book from school yesterday that talked about giraffes having long Necks. She says that she knows why they have long necks Related Wonders for You to Explore Match its definition: one of two equal parts of a divisible whole.

Word Match Congratulations! Share results. Play Again Quit. Next Question. See your results. Share Results. Retake The Quiz. I am afraid too many folks use a great imagination when it comes to the outdated, unscientific, bankrupt philosophy of evolution. Longer necks absolutely require many other changes at the same time. Oh well, the people of the world will just have to live with not knowing the real facts. Not re-writing it now! This is very interesting. So children have an innate belief in animals having been designed for a purpose.

No surprise there. How can we say this? Now we understand the complexity of the giraffe neck that is needed for it to survive—all the features to get the blood to the head without causing it to self destruct from incredibly high blood pressure when it puts it down to drink water. We also understand how it can ingest the thorns from the trees it eats from without it destroying its throat and digestive system thick mucus that coats the thorn. We also understand that there need to be multiple simultaneous changes in the genome and the epigenome to allow these functional changes.

A slow, gradual, neo-Darwinian process of one small mutation after another cannot account for these features. It is inconceivable—far beyond the probability boundary—that all of this could take place using the neo-darwinian processes. So yes, to believe in evolution requires that we be indoctrinated out of our commonsense and more. I suggest you read up on them. APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website.

Effective February , you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines. Research highlights from APS journals, including work on mirror neurons, social connection, and substance use.

The current function of a trait is not necessarily representative of why it evolved — an important caveat explicitly underlined by palaeobiologists such as Stephen J.

Gould and Elisabeth Vrba several decades ago. If the necks of modern giraffes are at least partially attributable to a shift in function, then our ability to answer the question of giraffe evolution cannot be based upon living animals alone.

In order to test their preferred sexual selection idea Simmons and Altwegg suggest going back to the fossil record to see when giraffes evolved the blunt ossicones males use in their competitions and how this corresponds to neck length. If the evolution of blunt ossicones tracks neck elongation, they hypothesise, then this might be an indicator that head-swinging contests had something to do with the neck elongation while the browsing hypothesis would have more to do with detecting a relationship between neck and leg length which would have pushed giraffes over the heads of competing browsers.

Correlation does not imply causation — even if the evolution of blunt, vertical ossicones and long necks coincided, that does not mean that the two are evolutionarily bound together — but by investigating these questions scientists would add a much-needed historical angle to research into giraffe necks.

Over the past several years it has been hinted that fossil giraffe expert Nikos Solounias has been describing the nearly-complete neck of a fossil giraffe called Bohlinia , a genus closely related to — if not ancestral to — the first members of the genus Giraffa.

When compared to the greater swath of giraffe diversity, it may be a crucial part of detecting the pattern of giraffe neck evolution. An outline of that pattern came out of a review published in by N. According to the known swath of fossil giraffes, significant neck elongation began around 14 million years ago during the Late Miocene — after the lineage to which the relatively short-necked okapi split off — and by about 5 million years ago giraffes of modern proportions had evolved.

As bracketed between known fossil types, the transition between the early, short-necked forms and the first long-necked giraffes probably occurred between 14 and 12 million years ago, and if further discoveries bear this out then it appears that the elongation of giraffe necks occurred during a global pattern of aridification in which grasslands replaced forests.

Again, this correlation does not by itself imply causation, but by investigating the tooth wear of giraffes before, during, and after this shift it could be detected whether their feeding habits changed and could have been part of the reason for neck elongation. This, in turn, might provide some insight into the tempo of giraffe evolution — did their neck vertebrae slowly become elongated at a near-constant rate, or did the altered activity of regulatory genes cause faster, large-scale shifts which turned out to be advantageous in the altered habitat?

Ultimately, a combination of natural history, embryology, and palaeobiology will be needed to fully understand the unique anatomy of giraffes. This is not something which will be accomplished in a year or even ten, but will take the persistent investigations of many researchers working across a variety of scientific disciplines.

It is better to admit that we are still unravelling a mystery than to dogmatically assert that all is solved and that all the uncharted places on the evolutionary map have been filled in. Giraffes, just like every other organism alive today, have a long evolutionary history stretching back to the last common ancestor of all life on earth, but understanding how they were shaped over the span of Deep Time is an ongoing endeavour which is just as inspiring as it can be frustrating.

Darwin and his contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace then famously turned this Lamarckism on its head, pointing out that the long neck would have come first, and this would have handed the taller individuals a significant advantage over shorter giraffes.

That idea stood largely unchallenged until, in a letter to this journal in , Chapman Pincher took issue and pointed out that the legs of a giraffe are also unusually long all the better for a swift escape from predators C. Pincher Nature , 29—30; The long neck, he said, must therefore have evolved as a way for the animal to be able to reach past its own legs when it leans to reach the ground to take a drink of water.

One of the most popular is that long necks help male giraffes use their heads to bash rivals, or that females prefer them. Both would suggest that long-necked males are sexually selected. And then there is thermoregulation. Originally, the suggestion was that long necks and legs significantly tilted the balance between volume and surface area that determines how quickly animals and other bodies gain and lose heat. Giraffes might look as if they have a larger than usual surface area compared with barrel shaped rhinos, elephants and others — but do they?

It turns out that few people have tried to measure the surface area of enough giraffes to be sure. They looked at measurements made for dozens of giraffes culled in Zimbabwe. They found that, pound for pound, the surface area of a giraffe is actually no larger than would be expected for any other animal of the same mass.