Food and Feeding
The giraffe browses for its food of leaves and shoots from trees and shrubs. Thorny acacia trees pose few problems for the giraffe; it picks off individual shoots and bunches of leaves from between the throns with its tongue, which can measure up to 18 inches long. Thornless plants are stripped of their leaves as the giraffe pulls the whole length of smaller branches through its teeth. The male and female feed from different parts of a tree. The female forages among the lower branches, while the male feeds from higher ones. This ensures that the sexes do not have to compete for food.

Giraffe and Man
Many different African tribes have traditions of hunting giraffes for food. The bushmen of Botswana hunt them on food, running up behind the giraffes to cut the tendons of their back legs before spearing them to death. Tribes in Sudan, Chad, and Ethiopia hunt them on horseback. Giraffes are also sometimes killed for the hair in their tails; the natives braid it and use it to make bracelets, which they sell to tourists. This practice has given rise to poaching in some parts of Africa.

Did you know?
A giraffe's long neck has the name number of vertebrae - seven - as most other mammals'. But the giraffe's are greatly elongated.
A giraffe is one of the few animals born with horns. A baby giraffe's horns lie flat against the skull when it is born, and pop upright during its first week of life.
Giraffe cows feed for more than half of every 24 hours; bulls feed much less often.

Distribution
Subsaharan Africa, in open woodland and grassland.

Size
Height including horns: Males, 15-17 feet. Females, 12-15 feet.
Weight: Males, 1,765-4,255 lbs. Females, 1,215-2,600 lbs.

Lifestyle
Habit: Loosely bound groups.
Lifespan: 26 years in the wild.