I have no idea how many pictures I took of this giraffe at the Nashville Zoo, but I could have watched it for hours.
Perhaps I’ve been overly influenced by recent media events, but I’ve decided to look into giraffe conservation in my next series of posts. Whether or not a baby giraffe is being born at a zoo, there are a number of reasons that focusing on giraffes makes sense right now. There have been concerns about big declines in wild giraffe numbers, and I’m not exactly sure what factors are contributing to those declines. I also saw information from a recent study which suggested that, rather than dealing with a single giraffe species, it may be more accurate to look at 4 different species across Africa. If that is the case, conservation may become much more complicated.
Other than that, I know that giraffes have long tongues, eat acacia leaves, and have the same number of cervical vertebrae as we do. I also know that they are fascinating to watch and are charismatic animals regularly used in conservation campaigns. But why do they need conservation in the first place? And what is being done to help them? These are questions that I don’t really know the answer to, but hope to better understand over the next few posts.