CHAP T E R X V I 

 THE GIRAFFE AND OKAP, 



THE GIRAFFE 



BV 11. A. BRYDEN 



G 



SOUTHERN GIRAFFE LYING DOWN 



This giraffe tvas <i present to S%uecn Victoria; it only lii-ed fourteen 

 days after its arrival 



IRAFFES, which arc found only in the 

 continent of Africa, arc the tallest of 

 all living creatures. They belong to 

 the Ruminants, or Cud-chewers, and naturalists 

 air inclined to place them somewhere between 

 the Deer Family and the Hollow-horned 

 Ruminants, in which latter arc t< > be found 

 oxen, buffaloes, and antelopes. Rutimeyer, tin- 

 Swiss naturalist, once defined them as " a most 

 fantastic form of deer," which is, perhaps, as 

 i^ood a definition of them as one is likely 

 to hit upon. Fossil discoveries show that, in 

 ages Ioiil,' remote, great giraffe-like creatures, 

 some of them bearing horns or antlers, roamed 

 widely in the south of Europe, Persia, India 

 and even China. 



( )f living giraffes, two species have thus 

 far been identified, — the SOUTHERN or CAPE 

 Giraffe, with a range extending from Bechua- 

 naland and the Transvaal to British East 

 Africa and the Soudan; and the NUBIAN or 



Northern Giraffe, found chiefly in East 

 Africa, Somaliland, and the country between 

 Abyssinia and the Nile. The southern giraffe, 

 which, from its recent appearance in the Gar- 

 dens of the Zoological Society, is now the more 

 familiar of the two animals, has a creamy or 

 yellowish-white ground-colour, marked by 

 s of different ages, from lemon-fawn t<> orange- 

 ( >ld bulls and occasionally old cows 



irregular blotches, which vary in colour, in anima 

 tawny, and in older specimens to a very dark chestnut 

 gr< >w extremely dark w ith age, .uu\ at a distance appear almost black upon the back and shoulders. 

 The northern giraffe is widely different, the coloration being usually a rich red-chestnut, 

 darker with age, separated by a line network of white lines, symmetrically arranged in 

 polygonal patterns. At no great distance this giraffe, instead of having the blotch)' or dappled 

 appearance of the southern giraffe, looks almost entirely chestnut in colour. Again, tin' 

 southern giraffe has only two horns, while the northern species usually develops a third, 

 growing from the centre of the forehead. These horns, which are covered with hair in both 

 , and tufted black at the tips, arc, in the youthful days of the animal, actually 

 -< parable from the bones of the head. As the animal arrives at maturity, they become firmly 



238 



