Fun Fact: Giraffes are the tallest living mammal
- Em
- Mar 10, 2017
- 1 min read
Here's a fun fact Friday: Giraffes are the tallest living animals.
Shocker eh?
Well the fact that giraffes are the tallest living animal may not come as a shock to you, however I did learn some interesting things in university about giraffes that I would like to share with you.
You may know that a giraffes impressive stature of 15ft-17ft allows them to eat vegetation on trees far outside the reach of other herbivores in the savannah but you might not know that they have the SAME number of vertebrae in their necks as most other mammals (which is 7 by the way).
One major disadvantage of being so tall is the massive head rush you you get from bending over. If we bend down letting blood pool to our head and then stand up quickly so the blood rushes out, we can pass out.
Giraffes avoid this every time the bend down 15ft to drink water with their massively powerful heart and muscular veins, which help them continue to pump blood to their brains!
Nifty eh?
Alright, one more fun fact about our very tall friends is that they all have unique body patterns. That's right, no two giraffes will have the same spots.
COOL EH?
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