World Giraffe Day<\/a> is an initiative of the Giraffe Conservation Fund and it is observed on June 21. This weekend would be a great time to pay these gentle giants a visit at the zoo. Giraffes happen to be my favorite zoo animals. Because I am very short, I admire their height, but I am also very fond of how gentle and graceful they are. They face a lot of challenges, and there are less than 80,000 giraffes remaining in the wild, meaning there are far fewer giraffes than elephants in Africa.<\/p>\n

Here are some ten giraffe facts for World Giraffe Day.<\/p>\n

<\/a>– Giraffes are the only animals born with horns, called ossicones. Males use their ossicones to spar with other male giraffes.<\/p>\n

– Giraffes are the tallest animals, with their legs alone measuring around 6 feet tall.<\/p>\n

– Giraffe are surprisingly speedy. They run as fast as 35 miles an hour over short distances, and when going long distances, they can cruise at approximately 10 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

– In fact, their speed is what got giraffes their name. The word \u201cgiraffe\u201d is believed to originate from the Arabic word “zarafa,” meaning \u201cfast walker.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Giraffes aren’t terribly thirsty. The majority of their water come from the plants they eat, and giraffes need to drink every few days or so.<\/p>\n

– The darkness of a giraffe’s spots indicates its age. A giraffe’s spots get darker as it gets older.<\/p>\n

– Speaking of spots, it is true that giraffes have unique spot patterns. While no two are identical, giraffes from the same area do have spot patterns that appear similar.<\/p>\n

– Giraffes have crazy tongues! Their tongues are between 18 and 21-inches long, and they use it to eat tasty morsels from branches. Their tongues are purple, which protect them from the sun\u2019s rays while eating.<\/p>\n

– Giraffes are herbivores, meaning they eat only plants like leaves, fruit, shoots, and seeds.<\/p>\n

– Although they have the same number of vertebrae as humans (7), their neck is 6 feet long.<\/p>\n

Giraffes alone are worth a visit to the zoo. Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo is observing World Giraffe Day a day early on June 20, 2015. You can find more information on the event here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sources: DoSomething.org<\/a>, National Geographic “Giraffe,<\/a>” World Giraffe Day<\/p>\n

You may also like:<\/strong> 7 facts about turtles for World Turtle Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Prior post: <\/strong>Stitch Fix Review June 2015: All the clothes that are fit in prints<\/a><\/p>\n

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World Giraffe Day is an initiative of the Giraffe Conservation Fund and it is observed on June 21. This weekend would be a great time to pay these gentle giants a visit at the zoo. Giraffes happen to be my favorite zoo animals. Because I am very short, I admire their height, but I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8906,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions\/8906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}