Rothschild's Giraffe

Fascinating facts about the Rothschild's Giraffe

• Rothschild's giraffes stand up to 5.88 m tall and can tip the scales at 1,100 kg. Even more striking, they are the only giraffes born with five ossicones, two large ones on top, a central forehead pair, and two behind each ear. This extra set of horns not only sets them apart visually but also offers researchers a clear genetic marker to monitor hybridization risks.
• Unlike many mammals that breed seasonally, Rothschild's giraffes can mate any month, leading to a gestation that stretches 14 to 16 months before a single calf arrives. This year-round breeding means calves can be born at any time, but it also fuels frequent male battles for mates.
• Captive breeding is a cornerstone of the species' rescue plan. Since January 2011, over 450 Rothschild's giraffes have been housed in ISIS-registered zoos worldwide, not counting those at Kenya's Giraffe Centre. That centre trains youngsters for release at two to three years old and has already set more than 40 individuals back into the wild, bolstering the dwindling gene pool.
• Only about 1,399 mature Rothschild's giraffes roam the wild, a number recorded in 2018. Sixty percent of those individuals call Uganda home, leaving the rest scattered across Kenya's protected reserves.
• In Murchison Falls National Park, researchers have documented two dwarf Rothschild's giraffes standing only 2.9 m tall. Scientists think this dwarfism stems from inbreeding caused by the species' sharp decline.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Rothschild's Giraffe

The Rothschild's giraffe is one of the most distinctive of all giraffe subspecies, and one of the rarest. Found today almost exclusively in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda and a handful of Kenyan reserves, it is recognised at a glance by the bright white legs below the knees (no markings, as if wearing tall stockings) and by five ossicones, the two large horn-like bumps every giraffe has, plus three smaller ones on the forehead and rear skull that no other subspecies carries. Once perilously close to extinction, with under 700 left in the wild in the 1990s, it has slowly clawed its way back to around 2,500 thanks to dedicated translocations and the work of a small number of Kenyan and Ugandan rangers.

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