PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVIS HUBER 39including lions, cheetahs, and gorillas, are in greater peril than is
widely realized. But, according to a 2018 study, this gap between
rose-tinted perceptions and dire reality is greatest for giraffes. Their
prevalence in the zeitgeist has masked their disappearance from the
planet. In 2010, eight times as many Sophie the Giraffe teething
toys were sold in France alone as there are actual remaining giraffes.
In 2016, the number of Britons who watched a giraffe kick a lion
in Planet Earth II exceeded the giraffe population by more than a
hundredfold. That same year, the Inter national Union for Conser-
vation of Nature reclassified the giraffe as “vulnerable” to extinction.
Even this grave assessment might be too optimistic: New genetic
evidence suggests that the giraffe may actually be four separate spe-
cies that have been evolving on their own for 1 million to 2 million
years. The iconic animal faces several falls instead of one.
Ferguson and her colleagues are trying to find out how the
giraffe became so endangered, and how to save it while they still
have time. They’re traveling across the few parts of Africa where
giraffes still exist, to affix trackers to several hundred individuals.
The process is exhilarating, but also dangerous—for both humans
and giraffes. Julian Fennessy, the foundation’s founder and director,
only recently recovered from three broken ribs and a dislocated
shoulder, sustained when the neck of a stumbling giraffe fell across
his torso. He sometimes has to reassure tourists on safari that he
is not a poacher. On occasion, his team has had to free tranquil-
ized giraffes that got stuck in trees, or steer them away from rivers.I
magine you are one of these giraffes. You are the tall-
est thing for miles. Everything about you defies gravity.
Your hips and shoulders are level with the tops of many
acacia trees, which to shorter mammals are the world’s
ceiling. Your head rises 19 feet into the air. As your sharp
gaze sweeps over vast swaths of savannah, you see five jeeps driv-
ing toward you.
Riding in the jeeps, we head toward a group of giraffes. I’m in
one of the back jeeps, standing next to two men from the Kenya
Wildlife Service. We watch the animals graze quietly, using their
long, prehensile, bizarrely bluish tongues to rip foliage from the
trees’ thorny branches. Giraffes evolved from short-necked ances-
tors, and whether they stretched to feed on leaves that are beyond
the reach of competitors, or to swing their head with greater force
during ritual combat, or to keep an eye on approaching preda-
tors, they ended up with a neck that’s more than twice as long
as that of any other living animal. They’re tall in a way that the
planet hasn’t otherwise seen since the dinosaurs’ reign. On Kenya’s
Laikipia Plateau, where the landscape is all flat-bottomed clouds
and flat-topped acacia trees, they tend to stick out.
From the lead jeep, Dominic Mijele, an experienced vet from
the Kenya Wildlife Service, selects a female—the one that Fer-
guson will later tackle—and uses a tranquilizer gun to shoot a
pink-tufted dart at her. His aim is perfect. The dart embeds in
the giraffe’s right shoulder and delivers its etorphine payload.Giraffe herds may have a mix of males and females or be segregated by sex. We still know strikingly little about the animals’ range and behavior.