Local Variation in the Giraffe 79 
The reader’s attention may now be directed to some of the leading points in connection 
with what is already known with regard to the various local forms of giraffes. And here 
it is essential to observe that, as the subject is somewhat more abstruse than many of 
those discussed in ANIMAL Lire, a certain amount of technicality is unavoidable. I shall, 
however, treat the subject in as popular a manner as the nature of the case permits. 
Apparently giraffes may be divided into two distinct species, of which the one 
oresents only a single colour phase, while the other has several. The first of these is 
the Somali or netted giraffe, ranging from Somaliland through the Lake Rudolf district 
to the northern part of British East Africa. It was originally described as a race, or 
local variety of the ordinary blotched giraffe, under the name of Giraffa camelopardalis 
reticulata; but now that it has been promoted to specific rank, it must be known 
simply as G. reticulata. No living example of this very handsome giraffe has hitherto 
been brought to this country, nor, so far as I am aware, to the Continent; neither 
is there a complete mounted skin in any of our museums. The British Museum has, 
however, a mounted head and neck; and excellent photographs: of dead individuals, as 
well as of living ones in covert, were obtained during Lord Delamere’s expedition to 
East Africa, some of the latter having been reproduced in earlier issues of this journal 
and in “The Living Animals of the World.” One of the latter is here reprinted 
(Fig. 5) for the sake of comparison. 
The body and neck of the Somali giraffe are coloured of a deep-liver red, marked 
with a very coarse network of narrow white lines, the meshes of which gradually decrease 
in size towards the head, although they are everywhere large. On the head itself the 
markings change to rounded chestnut spots on a fawn-coloured ground, the back of 
the ears being pure white, as are the legs below the knees and hocks. The liver- 
coloured areas on the body and the lower half of the neck are for the most part 
quadrangular, and show no tendency to become rounded. ‘The essential feature of the 
colouring is the superposition of a white network on a liver-red ground, so that this 
species cannot properly be described as a spotted animal. The unpaired horn on the 
forehead is moderately developed. 
The type of coloration distinctive of the Somali giraffe seems, as previously 
explained in this journal, a special adaptation to render the animals as invisible as 
possible when in the scrub-jungle to which they habitually resort. 
All the other known forms of giraffe may apparently be regarded as local variations 
of a single specific type, popularly known as the common or blotched giraffe, and 
technically as Giraffa camelopardalis. In none of the phases of this species are the 
dark areas of the deep liver-red tint characteristic of the Somali animal, while the light 
markings never form such a distinct and coarse network, and are usually tawny-coloured 
instead of pure white. It is, however, very noteworthy that the northern or typical 
form of the common giraffe is the one which makes the nearest approach in coloration 
to the Somali species, being a chestnut-coloured animal with an irregular network of 
light markings. It has, moreover, the three horns characteristic of the Somali species. 
On the other hand, as we travel down the eastern side of the African continent, it 
is noticeable that the pattern of the giraffe’s colouring shows a gradual tendency to 
pass from the reticulate, or netted, to the spotted, or blotched, type, this beg brought 
about by the increase in the width of the light markings and a darkening of their 
colour, accompanied by a corresponding diminution in the size and multiplication in 
the number of the dark areas. The culmination of this gradual change is that the 
Cape giraffe may be best described as a fawn-coloured animal marked with irregular 
dark blotches, which are chestnut-coloured in the cows and young males, but deep 
chocolate in the old bulls. Nor is this all, for the males of the Cape giraffe have 
almost completely lost the unpaired frontal horn so couspicuously developed in all or 
