Your move?

Natural History, March, 2004 by Erin Espelie

If Rudyard Kipling had written a Just So Story titled, "How the Giraffe Got His Neck," Kipling might have begun his fable with sparring males not unlike the two pictured here. Male giraffes often vie for dominance by intertwining, twisting, and slapping their necks together, a practice aptly called "necking." They also throw the occasional high kick and head butt, in attempts to knock their opponents off guard. A fable based on such behavior might even have some truth to it: a few biologists have suggested that giraffe necks grew longer because females saw them as a sign of male vigor.

Kipling may have short-changed Giraffa camelopadalis, but evolutionary biologists have not. Darwin mentions the giraffe in Origin of Species, under the heading "Organs of little apparent importance." There he hails the animal's tail as a well-designed tool for fly swatting--indispensable for dealing with Africa's abundance of insects. And in hopes of finding clues about how terrestrial dinosaurs functioned, anatomists have been keen to learn how giraffes regulate blood flow to their brain and kidneys.

Photographer Luiz Claudio Marigo found the young giraffes pictured here in Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park, near the South African town of Mtubatuba. After nearly an hour of exchanging routine blows, one giraffe slung his head to the ground and lifted his rival's leg into a pose that looks more like a limber hind-kick than a trip-up. Once in this position, though, both giraffes froze--stymied about what to do next.