Reproduction
Once pregnant, a female giraffe has a gestation period of about 15 months and usually only has one young at a time, but can have up to eight in her lifetime. Females return to the same spot each year to give birth to their young. Giraffe have babies at all times during the year, but most of the births occur during the dry season. When born, baby giraffes fall seven feet to the ground, since mother giraffes birth standing up. Giraffe calves can weigh up to 200 pounds when they are born, and stand as tall as 6 feet. Baby giraffe can stand up less than half an hour after being born, and are able to feed from mother’s milk. Baby giraffe will continue to feed from the milk until they are about a year old. Calves can grow 9 inches during the first month, and continue to grow at an enormous rate during the first year. After that, growth slows to less than an inch per year. Giraffe are very herd oriented animals, and will even entrust the care of their young to the crowd. Females begin to breed at about 4 years, and males at about 10 years.
Read more about this topic: Somali Giraffe
Famous quotes containing the word reproduction:
“It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)