GIRAFFES 303 



has been the only member capable of holding his place on the 

 earth. His very grotesqueness and colossal size, no doubt, 

 have been his salvation and have kept him aloof from close 

 competition with the more modern hoofed mammals with 

 which he shares the African continent. During Pliocene 

 times he occurred farther afield, as shown by fossil remains 

 from southern Europe and Asia, which region is generally 

 believed to be his birthplace. To-day a single species is 

 found in Africa, having a distribution throughout the whole 

 continent south of the Sahara with the exception of the 

 Congo forest area and the forested parts of the West Coast 

 generally. The giraffe is the tallest of all mammals, large 

 bulls not infrequently attaining a standing height of seven- 

 teen feet to the top of the horns. The usual height for bulls, 

 however, ranges from fifteen to sixteen feet. The me- 

 nagerie specimens, with which alone the public are familiar, 

 are quite undersized and seldom exceed thirteen feet in 

 height. Bulls are larger somewhat than the cows and are 

 always decidedly heavier in build. The skull of the bull 

 is much more massive and is exceedingly heavy, owing to 

 the large size and dense nature of the horn growths at 

 maturity. The upper lip projects far in advance of the 

 lower and is somewhat prehensile, an adaptation commonly 

 found in many browsing mammals. The sexes are alike in 

 coloration, the old bulls not being consistently darker than 

 the cows, as is so often stated. The nursing young are like 

 their parents in pattern but are lighter colored, although half- 

 grown, immature animals may be darker than the adults. 

 The female has a single pair of mammae and produces but 

 one offspring at a birth. Several well-marked geographi- 

 cal races are recognizable by differences in coloration and 

 horn development. There is little difference in body size 

 or in general style of coloration, all of the giraffes being 

 marked by large blotches of brown or red on a lighter 

 ground-color which take the form of irregular reticula- 

 tions. As we proceed from north to south the frontal 

 horn decreases in size until finally, in the extreme southern 

 race in South Africa, it disappears entirely, leaving the 

 two lateral horns only. Some eight races may be recog- 

 nized, although considerably more than this number have 

 been described. At least three of these forms inhabit east 



