In addition to a pair of big eyes, giraffes are also natural "watchmen" to monitor the enemy. They will keep turning their ears to find the sound source until they conclude that they are safe. Giraffes like to eat the leaves of big trees and the tender leaves of some hydrous plants. Its tongue can reach more than 50 cm when stretched, and it is extremely dexterous and convenient to eat leaves.
In 2005, a researcher in Africa discovered a white giraffe.
Strange appearance
Giraffes are the tallest animals on land. Both men and women have small horns that cover the skin and fluff. Eyes are large and prominent, located on the top of the head, suitable for hyperopia. It is covered with brown and yellow reticulated stripes.
Protruding neck
Giraffes' long necks are unique in the process of species evolution, so that they can eat fresh leaves and tree buds in higher places on the African savannah that other animals can't eat. But giraffes and other animals only have seven cervical vertebrae, but the spine is longer, and one spine is two meters long.
Because they often chew leaves picked from trees, their jaw muscles are always moving, and their faces grow slowly due to lack of exercise, so we can see that giraffes always have a stiff expression.
silence is gold
The giraffe's long tongue is snow blue. This is the color of saxophone, a thrilling color. However, they are not gossips. They are as quiet as nuns and never make a sound. Because they have no vocal cords. Perhaps silence is golden. It should be them. In fact, giraffes can make some noises. )
Giraffe's hypertension
The height advantage of giraffes requires them to have higher blood pressure than ordinary animals, so that the heart can send blood to the brain. Its blood pressure is about three times that of adults.
The inconvenience caused by long legs
Giraffes are inconvenient to drink water because of their long legs. They have to spread their front legs or kneel on the ground to drink water. When drinking water, they are very vulnerable to other animals, so giraffes who live in groups often don't drink together. According to fossil records, giraffes first differentiated from deer in the early Miocene. The earliest giraffe fossils are Climacoceras and Canthumeryx. Later, it evolved into an ancient giraffe, a giraffe ancestor with short horns and short necks in the early Miocene. By the late Miocene, Gu Lin had evolved into Samotherium. In Pliocene, Samoan animals were divided into two branches, one was Hogan and the other was the earliest modern giraffe. Hogan is one of the only two animals left in the giraffe family, and its appearance basically reflects the appearance of the Miocene giraffe.
There is also an evolving giraffe called Shiva beast, which is a stout animal with four horns. Now extinct. The bronze statues of some animals found in the Summarian cultural site are similar to the Siva beast. This shows that the Siva beast has probably survived in the Middle East for thousands of years. Giraffes live on the edge of tropical grasslands and forests. Is the tallest living animal. Sometimes the groups mixed with zebras, ostriches and antelopes are daytime. He has a keen sense of smell and hearing, and is alert and timid. He usually walks slowly, but he runs fast (up to 56 km/h). Looking for food in the morning and evening, mainly eating all kinds of leaves, thirsty. The reproductive period of giraffes is not fixed. Pregnancy 14~ 15 months, each baby is born 1. The baby born is 1.8 meters tall. It can stand up in 20 minutes after birth and fly like a flying horse in a few days. Sexually mature from 3.5 to 4.5 years old, with a life span of about 30 years.
Although giraffes can be seen giving birth in the zoo, it is not easy for ordinary people to observe their sleeping position. With luck, you may see the giraffe lying on its back. Adult giraffes rarely sleep, and they usually stand and catnap when they sleep. Editor's living environment giraffes live in arid and open savanna areas and live in groups. Their food is leaves and branches of all kinds of tall trees. Giraffes have keen hearing and vision. The eyes can see what is behind them, but they are as silent as dumb and rarely make a sound. Male giraffes are aggressive. They held hands and hugged each other for a long time. Just like two people fighting, neither of them will leave first.
Giraffes are representative animals in Africa and usually live in small groups in sub-Saharan tropical grasslands or semi-desert areas with few trees. Taxonomically, giraffes belong to the genus Giraffe (Giraffe) among mammals. Editor: Giraffe of Giraffe Family is the most unique class of Artiodactyla. Its teeth are primitive and low-crowned, so it can't take grass as its staple food, but leaves as its staple food. Its tongue is very long and can be used for feeding. It has short horns on its head and its whole body is covered with furry skin. There are only two kinds of giraffes in Africa, but they were widely distributed in prehistoric times. They can be divided into ancient partridge subfamily, partridge subfamily and western partridge subfamily Gulinae is the primitive type of giraffe, with small body, short limbs and neck, living in forests, widely distributed in prehistoric times, and can also be seen in China. Another representative of Guriaco, Okapia Johnstoni, is distributed in the tropical rain forest in eastern Congo, Africa, and maintains many primitive features. Giraffe is a giraffe that lives in the savanna. Because the trees in savanna are mostly umbrella-shaped and the leaves are concentrated in the upper layer, giraffes have evolved long necks and limbs and can eat leaves. There is only one species of giraffe giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) in the subfamily Giraffe, which is widely distributed in the savanna of Africa. It is the tallest living animal and one of the most familiar African animals. Xiwasuinae is a specialized giraffe, with a stout body and large flat horns. Now it's all extinct.
Giraffes commonly seen in zoos belong to a subspecies distributed in East Africa and are called reticulated giraffes. In addition, there are eleven different subspecies with different habitats, developed horns and stripes. However, some scholars have pointed out that Congolese giraffes and Sudanese giraffes, Zambian giraffes and Angolan giraffes, Kruger giraffes and South African giraffes cannot be distinguished in detail. The only giraffe species in the giraffe family of Artiodactyla. There are 8 ~ 12 subspecies. It is a large ungulate and the tallest animal in the modern world. When standing, it can reach 6-8 meters from feet to head and weighs about 700 kilograms. Newborn baby height1.5m; Color patterns vary from place of origin, including spot type, mesh type, star type, concave-convex type and spot type; The forehead is wide, the mouth and nose tip, the ears are large and upright, and the top of the head has 1 short horns, which are covered with skin and fluff; The neck is particularly long (about 2 meters), with 1 rows of bristles on the back of the neck; Short stature; The limbs are tall and strong, the forelimbs are slightly longer than the hind limbs, and the hooves are wide; The tail is short with black tufts at the end. Distributed in Africa. Giraffe is a ruminant cloven-hoofed animal, which grows in Africa and is the tallest terrestrial animal in the world. Male individuals are 4.8 to 5.5 meters tall and weigh 900 kilograms. Female individuals are generally smaller. Giraffe is a unique animal in Africa, which is related to deer and cattle, but belongs to different families, namely giraffe. The giraffe family includes giraffes and okapi. The scientific name of giraffe is camelopardalis, which comes from the name given to it in the early Roman Empire, which means a hybrid of camel and leopard, because its shape is similar to a mixture of these two animals. During the Ming Dynasty in China, Zheng He's fleet sailed to East Africa and brought back two giraffes, which were regarded as Kirin by people at that time. Ming Chengzu used this auspicious symbol to show his great management. Today, giraffes are still called Kirin in Japanese and Korean. When did this joke spread to China? In July 1985, 1 1, the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued a set of 4 commemorative stamps of J. 1 13 "The 580th Anniversary of Zheng He's Sailing to the West". The last "feat in the history of navigation" depicts the scene of Zheng He and his party in Africa, in which two giraffes appear. This is the first time that giraffes appear on stamps in China. To commemorate the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyage to the West, the State Post Bureau and the postal departments of Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions jointly issued a set of three commemorative stamps and a sheetlet with the same theme on June 28th this year, each with different designs and contents. The second set of commemorative stamps in Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Region all use giraffes to represent Zheng He's fleet's trip to Africa.
Now giraffe, the tallest animal in the world, is a representative wild animal in Africa. Taxonomically, giraffes belong to the family Giraffe of Artiodactyla, belonging to mammals. China has not produced giraffes since ancient times, but in 1979, there were many "Kirin" painted on the stone reliefs of the Eastern Han Dynasty discovered by Jiawang in Xuzhou, and at least three of them had the typical characteristics of African giraffes. 600 years ago, Zheng He went to the Western Ocean in the Ming Dynasty, with a history as far away as Africa. It is said that the reason for running so far is to look for the auspicious animal "Kirin" in China. In the ancient legend of China, unicorns appeared in the world, which bodes well for the country's prosperity and peace. However, no one has seen the deer, oxtail and unicorn described in this ancient book, so some people have always doubted whether it really exists. In the 12th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 14 14), on September 20th, Zheng He brought a giraffe back to Min Yang as a tribute to the new king Saifuddin of Bangra (now Bangladesh), which made the Ming Dynasty stunned the whole country. The scene at that time was like Shen Du's ode, which described "the people gathered to watch and were overjoyed". A poem once praised: "Southwest China, boundless sea, true unicorn, five feet high, elk hooves, meat horns, literary talent, red clouds and purple fog, and impractical toes, you must choose to swim." Because the giraffe's appearance and habits are too consistent with the Kirin described in China's ancient books, after further understanding, it is found that the giraffe's origin is in East Africa, and the local Somali language calls it "G ir i", which is very similar in pronunciation to Kirin, which makes China people believe that the giraffe is Kirin. So Zheng He's fleet sailed to West Asia for the fourth time, bypassed the Arabian Peninsula, made its maiden voyage to East Africa, and arrived at the giraffe's hometown in the 13th year of Yongle. In the same year, Zheng He's fleet returned to China, and ambassadors from various countries gathered together, including Marin State in East Africa (located in Malindi; One said he was an emissary of Kilwa Kisiwani in Tanzania. He gave a giraffe from his own country to Emperor Yongle. In the 14th year of Yongle (A.D. 14 16), Marin paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty for the second time. Ma Huan's book Ying Ya Sheng Lan describes the beast as follows: "Kirin, its first two feet are more than nine feet high, its last two feet are about six feet high, its head is ten feet, its neck is six feet long, and its toes are high and its back is low, so no one can ride it. There are two horns on the head, in the ears. Oxtail deer has three hooves and a nameplate. Eat millet, beans and cakes. " It is not difficult to see that the so-called "Kirin" is also a giraffe. According to Ming History, in the third year of orthodoxy (A.D. 1438), Bongla paid tribute to "Kirin". Why can Bangla in South Asia, which does not produce giraffes, pay tribute repeatedly? Historians believe that this is related to the international situation and maritime trade at that time. Before the great geographical discovery, Arabs controlled the maritime trade between East and West. Their dhows not only transport general goods, but also transport horses from Arabia and Somalia to India, and even transport elephants from Myanmar and Sri Lanka to India. Since dhows can carry horses and elephants, it is certainly no problem for Arabs to transport giraffes from East Africa, which they partially occupied, to Bangra, which also believes in Islam.