Joan Chrinko, Age 10, Of Franklin Park, N. J., for her question:
Where do giraffes come from?
The tall, gentle eyed giraffe is so strange to us that we find it hard to believe that he is a real animal. He amazes you, even when you see him with your own eyes in the zoo. Certainly he would seem very out of place browsing among the trees in the wild. But there are places where herds of wild giraffe are as ordinary as deer and dogs.
We would have to trave1 all the way to africa to find the native home of the handsome giraffe. The big, shy fellow lives on the grassy wet lands south of the sandy Sahara desert. He shares his hot and sunny home with the frisky zebra and the bad tempered rhinocerous, the plumy ostrich and the prowling lion.
He may stand 19 feet high, and he claims the title of the world's tallest animal. His graceful neck may be more than six feet long. But he has only seven neck bones, which is no more than the number of neckbones in a cow or a horse. His backbone swoops down in a steep slope from his head to his tail.
The giraffe is a ruminant or cud chever. He is distantly related to the caws and the deer. But the strange okapi is the only cousin close enough to belong in the giraffe family. Like all of the cud ehevers, the giraffe dines only on vegetables his favorite food is the leafy foliage of the acacia tree. Here and there across the grassy wet lands there are clumps of these sturdy trees, arid here we find the giraffe and his relatives. The big fellow is tall enough to reach the tender twigs from the tree tops, and the strange markings on his velvety coat make him almost invisible in the sun speckled shade of the African scenery.
The giraffe usually strolls along on his c1oven feet, keeping a sharp watch for hungry lions. But when he has to, he can outrun a horse. He runs like a camel, moving his two right feet, then his two left feet. His gentle eyes are fringed with thick lashes, and he can c1ose his nostrils to keep out the blowing dust. His 18 inch tongue and his long upper lip make it easy for him to browse from the tree tops. But he cannot eat grass or drink at the water hole without spreading his front feet far apart.
Mrs. Giraffe is not quite so tall as her handsome husband. As a rule, the giraffe family has little or nothing to say, and some people claim that these animals have no voices at all. But mama giraffe gives forth a soft mooing call when junior strays far from her side. And if he gets into trouble, junior yells like a lost calf. A baby giraffe stands six feet tall, and he is not fully grown until he is perhaps eight years old.