Nature Walk: Giraffes

We examine the giraffe, and discover a few things about this graceful animal that remained unknown for many, many years.

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Who isn’t fascinated by the graceful giraffe? These tall animals are always appealing to look up at. Your eyes cannot help but work their way from the giraffe’s spindly long legs, up to their large bodies and long necks, right on up to their seemingly small head that feature little horns called ossicones. These ossicones are actually cartilage covered with hair. When the giraffes are born, the ossicones actually lay flat and are not attached to the skull, so as not to damage the mother during the birthing process. Both male and female giraffes have them, but they’re only used occasionally by the males while fighting.

Giraffes are so tall they look quite awkward when they head off to watering holes to get a drink. But, most of the time, they are seen on the hot plains of Africa: standing; walking; or eating from thorny bushes, plants, and trees with their dark, melanin-rich tongues, which can be black, midnight blue, or sometimes dark purple.

While these daily activities are very routine, surely, I thought, they must take a little nap in the shade to briefly escape the heat of the day. Well, Gentile scientists have documented that they don’t sleep very often, or for very long. In fact, the average sleep a giraffe gets is thirty minutes within a 24-hour period. Thirty minutes! That’s it! With daytime and nighttime predators constantly on the hunt, you literally have to stay on your hooves on the African plains.

For many years, the scientific community was baffled as to how the necks of giraffes were so long, yet allowed for blood to flow to their heads without making them pass out. I’m sure you’ve experienced that feeling if you’ve been upside down and then lifted your head back up too quickly. Usually, a surge of blood comes rushing to your brain. I learned at a young age to not do that too often, and I outright stopped doing it as I got older, because it makes you extremely dizzy and you can suddenly find yourself unconscious!

Contrary to what early Gentile scientists believed, giraffes actually don’t have two hearts to help pump blood to their head, nor is their one heart unusually large. Instead, unlike other mammals, they have discovered that giraffes have a “supercharged” heart, which pumps blood within their thick blood vessel walls. An intricate network of capillaries and valves, meanwhile, stores and releases blood in the giraffe’s neck, which enables them to bend over awkwardly at those watering holes and then quickly raise their heads again without fainting. That’s how wonderful Yah is. Something he created long ago has such a simple function, yet that function baffled scientists for many years, despite all the data, modern technology, and innovations of man.

But what I found most fascinating about this mammal was that it is considered clean as part of our Levitical diet. Giraffes can be eaten! You heard me right. These giant mammals are clean to eat, because they have split hooves and a four-chambered ruminant stomach that allows them to chew the cud after they consume roughly 75 pounds of leaves, shoots, and vines each day and night.

When I stumbled on this knowledge I thought, then why is it not mentioned in Scripture as being on the Hebrew menu and part of our diet? They do look docile enough after all. But after a bit of research, it was revealed to me that they have a long lifespan of 25 years, plenty of years and time to work up muscles in those spindly looking legs of theirs. Yep, those legs are stronger than they look, and if an adult giraffe can kill a lion with a stiff kick, I guess my ancestors thought it not worth the hassle for the taste of giraffe meat, which is said to be “naturally sweet” and not that appealing to the majority of taste buds out there.

Simply amazing. Yah created such a beautiful and unique looking mammal, the tallest living terrestrial animal we see today, with tiny ossicones, dark colored tongues, long necks, and spindly looking legs. Even their camouflage spots are beautiful to look at. So, the next time you see a giraffe, think about all the interesting things you just learned.

And remember, this video barely scratches the surface on all the info available on this subject. To learn more, be sure to visit your local library, or ask a grownup for help doing more research on the internet. Shalom.


Keywords: giraffe, Levitical diet, clean meat, kosher animal, ruminant stomach, ossicones, nature walk, nature, education, carrots, hebrew israelite, kingdom preppers, growing up hebrew, Little Kingdom Preppers, LKP, Little KP, GUH, KP

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