When looking at the pictures above, it’s easy to see why some people have thought that perhaps giraffes, with their long necks, are related to long-necked dinosaurs such as brachiosaurus. The similarities go even further than appearances, with both the giraffe and brachiosaurus being plant eating herbivores.

So what is the truth? Are giraffes the descendants of dinosaurs?

No, they are not!

Dinosaurs like brachiosaurus were sauropods that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, and went extinct 65 million years ago at the end of the cretaceous along with all other species of dinosaur.

The only modern-day descendants of dinosaurs are birds.

Giraffes are ungulate (hooved) mammals, and share common ancestry with horses and camels. Interestingly, giraffes are more closely linked to humans than any dinosaur!

Technically speaking giraffes are born head first. When a mother giraffe is ready to give birth, she normally gives birth to one calf or on rare occasions, twins. She will give birth to her young standing up. The calf emerges head and front legs first, having broken through the fetal membranes, and falls to the ground, severing the umbilical cord.

The calf’s mother can typically then be found grooming her newborn and helping it stand up on its own. Within only a few hours of birth, the calf will be able to run around and is almost indistinguishable from a one week old.

Giraffe gestation usually lasts around 400 to 460 days, after which a single calf or on rare occasions twins are born. The mother giraffe give birth to her young standing up. The calf emerges head and front legs first, having broken through the fetal membranes, and falls to the ground, severing the umbilical cord. So in a nutshell, the mother gives birth standing up but the calf is not born standing up.

Generally, the mother giraffe can be found grooming the newborn soon after birth and helping it stand up. Newborn giraffes are about 6 feet tall and within a few hours after being born can usually run around. For the first few weeks of life, they will spend most of their time hiding.

Giraffes are in fact one of the few hoofed animals born with horns. Both sexes have these prominent horn like structures that are referred to as ossicones and are formed from ossified cartilage, covered in skin and fused to the skill at the parietal bones. The giraffe’s upper jaw has a grooved palate and lacks front teeth, while their molars consist of the rough ossicones, which have lain flat while the giraffe was in the womb. These ossicones become erect within a few days after the giraffe is born.

Being vascularaized, these “horns” or ossicones may have a role in thermoregulation and are also used in combat between male giraffes. Appearance of the ossicones help identify the sex and age of a giraffe, with the ossicones of females being young and thin, displaying tufts of hair on the top, and adult male’s ossicones ending in knobs and tending to be bald on top.

It is true that just like humans, all kinds of animals, including the giraffe can be homosexual. For these animals, there is documented homosexual behavior of one or more of the following kinds: sex, courtship, affection, pair bonding, or parenting.

Another interesting fact is that giraffes have actually often been referred to as “especially gay” due to the fact that they are often found engaging in same-sex sexual behavior, more than male-female (heterosexual) sex. Newer research has shown that same sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species. Furthermore, homosexual behavior is best known from social species.

While most species of giraffes are not endangered, some species such as the West African And/or Nigerian Giraffe are endangered due to the fact that human poachers often hunt them for their skins, meat, fur and tails. Unfortunately these creature’s tails are often made into good luck bracelets.

Other reasons for certain species of giraffes becoming endangered include loss of habitat, slow rate of breeding, and increasing change in climate. Drought and flooding are two examples among these changes in climate affecting these endangered species of giraffes. Giraffes are widespread throughout Africa and their population totals more than 100,000. Sadly, there are now less than 200 West African Giraffes in existence today, and fewer than 2,500 Ugandan Giraffes.