Male giraffes fight with each other, swinging their necks to hit each other, or swinging their heads like hammers on each other, and sometimes raising their legs to kick each other.
Giraffes use huge hooves to kick and stomp against predators, either kicking lions to death with one kick, smashing lions into meatloaf, and even smashing giraffes to death when they fall. But it is not easy for giraffes to kick lions to death, not only a wealth of experience, but also excellent luck, and some female giraffes with cubs will accidentally kick their cubs to death when attacking lions.
Giraffes have also been killed.
In 2018, Moroa, a safari keeper in Limpopo Province, South Africa, was kicked in the stomach by a giraffe and fainted on the spot while feeding giraffes, and died of ineffective rescue.
In 2018, the famous director Carlos Cavallo, 47 years old, was hit by a male giraffe nearly 5 meters high while filming a movie in Hartbyspot, South Africa, and died of a serious head injury when he fell to the ground.
It can be seen that the strong neck and huge hooves of the giraffe are indeed very lethal.
In terms of average body weight, giraffes rank seventh or eighth on land, behind African steppe elephants, Asian elephants, African forest elephants, Indian rhinos, white rhinos, great hippos, and Javan rhinos. According to scientific research data in the Transvaal, South Africa, male giraffes have an average height of 5.05 meters and an average weight of 1192 kg; female giraffes have an average height of 4.44 meters and an average weight of 828 kg. The recorded male giraffe had a maximum height of 5.88 meters and a maximum weight of 1930 kg, and a female giraffe had a maximum height of 5.17 meters and a maximum weight of 1180 kg.
Giraffes are the tallest and longest-necked animals on land, with a neck length of up to 2-2.4 meters, a heart-to-head distance of more than 2 meters, a strong heart weighing 12 kilograms, and blood pressure and systolic blood pressure 2.5-3 times that of humans.
As for why the neck of the giraffe is so long, the French biologist Lamarck uses "selective inheritance" to explain, the essence is "use in and out", that the ancestors of the giraffe in order to eat the leaves and pods of the acacia tree, the cervical vertebrae gradually elongated, the legs also became longer, has become the current look. At present, more people think that it is "sexual selection", because the longer and thicker the neck, the more the giraffe fights, the more favored the female, the more its offspring, which is the "necks for sex hypothesis".
The giraffe's cervical vertebrae, like humans, mice, and pigs, are 7 pieces, but its cervical vertebrae are even larger, about 25 cm long. Giraffes have very flexible necks and swing much more than humans, resulting in strange fighting styles.
Two male giraffes swing their necks and whip each other, or wave their heads to hit each other like hammers. This kind of throw is not fast to the naked eye, but it is powerful, they swing their necks at an angle of 120 degrees, forming an arc-shaped throw with a radius of about 1 meter, completing the impact in one-third of a second, and the sound emitted by the violent impact can be heard 100 meters away.
The giraffe's huge head and hard horns are like a meteor hammer, and hitting the opponent will cause bruises and even skin and flesh. The horns of the giraffe are attached to the skull, although not sharp, but very strong, do not fall off, and are wrapped on the outside like the rest of the body. This horn is called "giraffe antlers", and in addition to giraffes, the okapi that is closest to giraffes is also this horn.
Mammalian horn types also include hole horn, solid horn, epidermal horn, and fork horn antelope horn. The bovine family is cave horn, the deer family is solid horn, the rhinoceros family is the epidermal horn, and the fork horned antelope is the fork horn antelope horn.
A big reason why the giraffe's neck is so flexible is that the ball and socket joints between the various cervical vertebrae are connected, which is conducive to greater swing and rotation. Giraffes also have very pronounced bulging shoulders at the junction of their necks and shoulders, similar to the human "rich bags". However, the human "rich bag" has great harm, and the giraffe's "rich bag" can protect the neck very well. These strong muscles act as cushioning and shock absorbers, protecting the heavy neck.
Despite the protection of the ball and nest joints and the "rich bag", such a high-intensity swing of the neck will inevitably occur accidents, some unlucky male giraffes unfortunately break their necks during the fight, and the originally straight neck becomes like a leftover twist, some will die soon after, and some will survive tenaciously with deformed necks. Passing on the generations is not to think, even drinking water and running has become a problem. In 2015, a male giraffe in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park broke its neck while fighting its own kind, and survived tenaciously to become a local star.
In addition to the unique fight with their necks, giraffes also like to use their legs, their legs can be easily lifted to a height of two meters, can be pressed on the opponent's neck to suppress the opponent, sometimes the two males lift each other's hind legs to press each other's neck, so that both sides can not move, after a stalemate will be dizzy. For a giraffe with high blood pressure, it is very difficult to lower its head, so this strange "gymnastic play" spells willpower and endurance, which is more gentle than shaking the neck and hammering each other.
Giraffes treat their kind with no mercy, nor are they polite to predators. Natural enemies of giraffes include lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, cheetahs and Nile crocodiles.
Lions are the biggest natural predator of giraffes, lions will not specifically select the old and sick when hunting giraffes, all giraffes will be threatened by lions, and even adult male giraffes are more likely to be hunted by lions.
Studies in Kruger Park found that male giraffes were killed by lions about 1.8 times more than female giraffes.
Pienaar analyzed 108 giraffes killed by lions over two years in Kruger National Park, of which 56 percent were males, 31 percent were females, and the rest were unrecognizable.
The reason males are more likely to be hunted by lions is due to the feeding habits of male giraffes. They often tilt their heads when eating leaves from high places, making it difficult to see lions creeping closer to them, while female giraffes are more alert than male giraffes when eating, and can react quickly when a lion approaches. Giraffes can reach a maximum speed of 60 km / h, and hitting a person is like a car accident. Jogging is also 16 km / h, and once the giraffe runs, it is difficult for the lion to subdue it.
Sometimes the giraffe can kick or seriously injure the lion when it fights back, and its huge hooves are the size of a plate for someone to eat, and kicking the lion's head is like lifting a hammer and smashing it on a coconut.
In "Super Lions", It is described that Barty, the boss of a male lion alliance in Serengeti, was kicked under the armpit in 2010 while rounding up a giraffe, broke three ribs, and inserted bones into internal organs, causing massive bleeding, and died shortly after.
The strange body structure of the giraffe derives a strange way of fighting, which seems very funny to us humans, but this is the most suitable way for the giraffe to survive.