Giraffes. Why talk about giraffes? Well, they are a very underrated species (whatever that means). When you tell someone to think of a giraffe, most people will just imagine some yellow thing with a really long neck. That’s correct of course, but there is much more than meets the eye.
Giraffes are born with many gifts, the most obvious of which is their height. The average giraffe at birth is 6 feet tall. This means that with a few exceptions (runts and midgets) the average baby giraffe is already taller than I am. Do you realize how unfair this is? I have spent many many years consuming nutrients to make my body grow taller, and yet giraffes are instantly taller than I will ever be. The only negative of this is that it’s a tall drop from the butt of a giraffe to the ground, so when the baby is born, it probably receives brain damage from the impact.
Another gift they have is having a blue tongue. Don’t believe me? Take a look yourself.
So what exactly is so good about this, you might ask. And I might give you an example. Let’s say some animal calls an animal meeting because there is animal business to be taken care of. The first important issue is … who ate all the blueberry ice cream. Now do you see? The giraffe can get away with this atrocious crime because it’s tongue is already blue! Genius. If I was the one who ate all the blueberry ice cream, my tongue would be blue, which is an unnatural color for my tongue, and then the other animals in the animal meeting would trample me to death.
Giraffes can also run up to 55km/hr (taken from wikipedia so they use the un-American km… speaking of which, we Americans should have our own unit of time too since we like being different). Usain Bolt had to work hard to run 9.69 m/s. A giraffe can run about 15 m/s. How hard did the giraffe train? Nil. Zilch. The world is so unfair.
Usain Bolt vs Baby Giraffe
It’s already clear that giraffes are very awesome at birth. The fun doesn’t stop there however. They partake in something called necking. For us humans, necking only means kissing, which is cool if you’re into that kind of thing. If you’re into something more testosterone filled, you only have to look at the giraffe version of necking. Get this. Their version of necking involves taking their necks and swinging them at each other’s necks in order to do battle. That beats kissing any day in my book. It’s important to note that necking has a sexual purpose too. Taken from Wikipedia : “Another function of necking is sexual, in which two males caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax. Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling.”
I know that I’ve painted a perfect picture for the life of a giraffe, but things aren’t always so dandy. Here’s a narrative from a giraffe (by HENRY HO!!!!!!!!).
Recently being a giraffe is not enough for me. Living everyday, voiced over by Ross, looking weird drinking water, running around day after day as awkward as a stick figure; I feel like a stick figure, existing in two dimensions. Oh, being a giraffe is all that I can be. I hate my existence. Sometimes I would be reaching for a leave high up in the trees just to realize that leaves are all that I can eat because no fruit grows this fricking high. I exist in such a two dimensional world. Oh... what is beyond eating leaves all day. One good thing that happened today: a lion finally got that itch I have not being able to get when she jumped on my back and started chewing on me. Yes, sometimes I think about killing myself, but the lion usually falls off and kills herself in the process of trying to kill me, and my longass neck makes it extremely difficult for me to kill myself. Yay me, I can get the highest leaf in the forest.
Even giraffes can be sad.
