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FACTFILE Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (4 p.m. in winter) Family ticket available (£28 - price valid until 2/4/01) Large free car park Travel information: Easy access from M3 and M27 Well sign-posted Tel: 01962 777407 Fax: 01962 777511
Marwell is situated six miles southeast of Winchester in Hampshire and makes a wonderful day out for all the family. The zoo has a setting of great natural beauty with large paddocks and enclosures for its animals. There are over 200 species of rare animals including Siberian Tigers, Snow Leopards, Rhino, Meerkat, Hippo and Zebra. Marwell is dedicated to the conservation of endangered species. Enjoy the World of Lemurs, Encounter Village, Into Africa, Tropical World, Penguin World (with underwater views of Humboldt Penguins), the Fossa Exhibit, Owl aviaries and the Rodent Room. Marwell has road and rail trains, special events throughout the year, Creature Close-up sessions, family restaurant, gift shops and adventure playgrounds. The zoo provides a day full of fun and interest for all ages |
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Giraffe (Giraffe camelopardalis )
Tallest land animal. Very long neck and legs.
Status: Lower Risk
Distribution: Africa, south of the Sahara
Sexually mature: 4
Gestation: 460
Number of young: 1
Life span: 20
Description
There are several different races of giraffe, distinguished by colouration and pattern. Giraffes normally live in small herds of 10 - 15 individuals, led by an adult male (bull). The mother gives birth while standing. At birth the single youngster may weigh 50 - 70 kg and reach 1.7 - 2m in height. It begins to eat solids after approximately 1 month and is fully weaned within a year. Because of their great height, giraffes, which are ruminants (they chew the cud), are able to browse the uppermost branches of trees. Thus they face little competition from other herbivores. Their great height also gives them the advantage of seeing predators from a distance. They have few enemies beside humans. The time when they are most susceptible to attack from a lion is when they have their head lowered for drinking. When frightened they can reach speeds of 47 km/h (nearly 30 mph). A bull giraffe may reach nearly 6m in height (over 18 ft). However, like most mammals (including humans) they have only 7 neck vertebrae, the bones being greatly elongated. giraffes have specially developed physiological adaptations to allow an even flow of blood to the brain when the neck is suddenly lowered or raised.
In Captivity
Giraffes breed reasonably well in captivity, and Marwell has been particularly successful. Although the mother usually cares for her baby, it is not uncommon to have to hand-rear a young giraffe that has been rejected. Such a 'baby' can drink up to 10 litres of full cream milk each day. The adults are fed a mixture of oats, flaked maize, bran, custom-mixed diet, lucerne hay and, when the season allows, leafy branches. When allowed out in the paddock in the summer they may graze - a habit uncharacteristic of the species - having denuded all the trees within their reach.
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| World's first zoo salad bar opened - giraffes only | The world's first salad bar for giraffes has been set up at a zoo in the Netherlands. Amersfoort Zoo is hanging baskets filled with vegetables and hay in the tops of trees for the animals. They want to encourage their giraffes to eat like they would in a natural habitat, by using their necks and straining for food up trees. Zoo keepers were worried the animals were getting lazy and bored with just having their food served up by staff everyday. Mark Hoedemaeker, zoo manager, says a salad bar will help encourage the giraffes to work for their food and keep them occupied. "Having a saladbar, the giraffes have to search for their meal since the baskets are hung 50 meters from each other," he said. "They are filled with food a few times a day." |
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Description There are several different races of giraffe, distinguished by colouration and pattern. Giraffes normally live in small herds of 10 - 15 individuals, led by an adult male (bull). The mother gives birth while standing. At birth the single youngster may weigh 50 - 70 kg and reach 1.7 - 2m in height. It begins to eat solids after approximately 1 month and is fully weaned within a year. http://www.marwell.org.uk/ |
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Breeding: Sexual maturity of the female is at 48-60 months, the male is at 42 months. The giraffe mate at any time of the year with the gestation period being between 453 - 464 days. There is usually only one calf, very rarely twins. A giraffe cow in season attracts males from all around, but is soon won by a dominant bull. He drives off the subordinate bulls by threatening them; fighting is rarely necessary at this stage. A giraffe's pregnancy lasts fifteen months, after which the cow will go to a traditional calving ground used by females time and time again to have her single calf. Giraffe calves are born with horns, which is unusual. The horns lie flat against the baby's skull when it is born, but pop up during the first week of life. The calving ground ensures that the young calf is always left in a group of young giraffes of about the same age when its mother goes off to feed in the middle of the day. Even so the calves are heavily predated by hyenas, leopards, and wild dogs, and only about half of them will survive their first six months. As the calf grows older it joins its mother. Lions become its main enemy, but a female giraffe can kill a lion with a well-aimed kick of its front feet. After the calves are a year old, less than one in ten will die in each year. Weaning takes fifteen months, although a calf's mother will mate again five months after her calf is born. A young female stays in her mother's home range but young males form all-male 'clubs', and wander away when they are about three years old. |
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Food and Feeding: Giraffes are browsers, and feed on the leaves and shoots of trees and shrubs. They vary the way in which they gather food depending on what it is eating. Some trees, like the acacia, are very thorny, so the giraffe needs to take care when eating from them. They bite off individual shoots and bunches of leaves between the thorns. A giraffe's tongue can be up to 45cm long, and it uses this to pull leaves into its mouth and coats the whole ball in sticky saliva making it safe to swallow. They can pull the smaller branches of less thorny trees through their lobed canine teeth, stripping them of their leaves. The way giraffes feed reduces competition between the sexes. Females bend down to reach lower branches of trees and shrubs, whilst males stretch up to get the leaves from the very tops of trees. Giraffe cows feed for up to twelve hours in every twenty-four, but males feed for much less time. Adult giraffes eat about 60kg of leaves every day.
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The giraffe has often been made the object of jokes. Have you heard the one about : "What's a definition of pain?" Answer, "A giraffe - with a sore throat !!" The giraffe is in fact the tallest animal on our planet earth. They can reach up to 5.5 metres tall, and their long legs carry them at speeds of up to 20 mph. Many biologists believe that the giraffe slowly developed by a gradual process of evolution. Can you believe it? Let's think about some of the facts, to help us make up our minds. Giraffes are browsers. They nibble thorny branches well beyond the reach of other animals. Their tongues can extend up to 45 centimetres! Evolutionists tell us that long, long ago, giraffes had short necks but in times of drought - when food was scarce - the ones with slightly longer necks could reach the higher leaves on the trees, and survive. The trouble with this idea is that the young giraffes are much shorter than their parents, and so if they could not reach the higher leaves, they would die. There would be no giraffes left in the world today. There are no giraffe fossils showing this gradual development of longer and longer necks! In Africa today there is a short-necked giraffe - called the okapi, which is only 1.5 metres high. Yet it is surviving reasonably well with only a short neck. It shows no sign of evolving a longer one. The giraffe has several amazing features which would all have had to evolve at the same time to be of any benefit for its survival. Its heart: As the giraffe has such a long neck, its head is a long way from its body. The giraffe has an extra large heart to pump all the blood uphill to its head. As a result it has the highest blood pressure of any animal. If the giraffe's brain did not get a proper blood supply, it would have brain damage due to shortage of blood. When a giraffe needs to drink, it has to spread its legs wide apart and then lower its head. You may have noticed that you can feel dizzy as a result of bending down and then lifting your head too quickly. This could be terrible for a giraffe, when it needs a drink. All the blood would rush to its head. Fortunately the giraffe has a number of special valves in the blood vessels in its neck. When the giraffe lowers its head to drink, the valves close to stop the blood rushing to the brain. These same valves prevent all the blood rushing away from the giraffe's head, when the giraffe stands up again. Some spongy tissue below the brain also gives extra protection. Do you think it is likely that the giraffe could have slowly evolved its large heart, the special valves in its neck, plus the spongy tissue below its brain - at the same time as its neck became longer and longer? Remember that without these parts, all working properly, a long necked giraffe would not even be able to drink! The idea that this all happened by chance, through a process of evolution, sounds like a real 'tall story'! It seems easier to believe that the great Creator God designed the giraffe - with its long neck and all the special body parts needed for survival. R. Dahl imagines a boastful giraffe saying: "My neck can stretch terribly high, Much higher than eagles can fly. If I ventured to show Just how high it would go You'd lose sight of my head in the sky!" (The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me) |
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