KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 48. N:0 5. 145 
so different in colour that if either was protectively coloured the other could hardly 
be so. 
The pattern of the Giraffe can thus hardly be said to be protective and a result 
of natural selection for that purpose, The present writer must agree with RoosevEeLr 
when he says — — — »save under wholly exceptional circumstances no brute or 
human foe of the giraffe could possibly fail to see the huge creature if fairly close 
by; and at a distance the pattern of the coloration would be lost. The giraffe owes 
nothing to concealment; its coloration has not the slightest concealing effect so far 
as its foes are concerned.» 
But if the pattern of colouration of the Giraffe cannot be explained as protec- 
tive some other explanation must be tried. A comparative study of the different 
races of Giraffe and their young ones may perhaps give a hint for the understand- 
ing of the origin of the pattern. In the young Giraffes there is less difference in 
colour between the spots or blotches and the ground colour, and the interspaces 
between the spots are comparatively broader than in the adult. In some races of 
Giraffe (e. g. G. c. tippelskirchi) the spots of both sexes are irregular with jagged 
contour, more or less star-like in shape. In other races (e. g. G. c. rothschildi) it is 
only the females which have irregular, jagged and star-like blotches which are >red- 
dish chestnut in colour upon a light orange-fawn ground» (LyDEKKeER), while the 
males have large and very dark-coloured spots, »showing a tendency to split up into 
stars, as indicated by lighter tripartite radiating lines in the larger ones and the light 
interspaces yellowish fawn forming narrow network-lines on the body» — — —." Still 
another type is the one displayed by G. c. reticulata in which the ground colour of 
the fully adult animals is reduced to a white net-work of comparatively narrow lines 
between large dark areas. 
It is a generally accepted rule that the colour of the young, when it is diffe- 
rent from that of the adult, and does not show any distinct secondary adaptation, 
represents a recapitulation of a phylogenetically earlier stage of development. It is 
also a general rule among mammals, and certainly not least among ruminants that 
the old males represent the latest and most specialised type. Considering this and 
the facts about the colouration of Giraffes as stated above, it appears more than 
probable that the pattern of these animals has been gradually developed in such a 
way as the ontogeny of several races indicates. The first stage has thus had com- 
paratively indistinct or ill-defined blotches which have not been very much darker 
than the reddish or yellowish red ground colour. In the next stage the blotches have 
deepened in colour, but their outlines are still indistinct, or at least irregular and 
jagged. The darkening of the spots has been very well described by Tuomas for the 
race which some few years later was named G. c. rothschildi by LyDEKKER. THOMAS 
writes:* »The blotches in young specimens are reddish fawn, darkening in the centre 
to deep blackish brown, and this darkening spreads outwards in old specimens, until 
the blotches are wholly blackish.» A few lines further below THomas also points 
1 Lypeker: Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1904 p. 210. 
2 Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1911, p. 475. 
K. Sv. Vet. Akad. Handl. Band 48. N:o 5. 19 
