KtrNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAE. 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 Roosevelt 



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, 0. c. tippelskirchi) the spots of both sexes are irregular with jagged 

 contour, more or less star-like in shape. In other races (e. g. 0. c. roihschildi) 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* (Lydekker), 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 0. 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 Thomas 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 Ltdekee: Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1904 p. 210. 

 * Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1911, p. 475. 



K. Sv. Vet. Akad. Handl. Band 48. N;o 6. '^ 



