40 APRIL 2020
(TOP TO BOTTOM) 1, 2, 5: DAVIS HUBER. 3, 4: TYLER SCHIFFMAN.The female twitches nonchalantly, as if bitten by a horsefly, and
returns to eating. For a few minutes, nothing happens. Then,
she starts running.
Unexpectedly, a calf runs behind her. It can’t be more than
two weeks old, but it was born taller than most of the people
pursuing it. Its presence complicates matters, but it quickly takes
itself out of the equation by crouching and hiding, flattening its
neck in a most un-giraffelike way. Its mother, meanwhile, leads
the jeeps on a chase.
We tear after her, swerving between the trees and occasion-
ally bulldozing them. When the terrain allows, we leap out and
sprint after her, ducking branches covered in inch-long thorns.
If the giraffe falls backwards, she risks serious injury to her head
and neck. Taking a page from The Empire Strikes Back’s playbook,
the team tries to wrap ropes around her legs and guide her into
a safer forward stumble.
After Ferguson brings her down, four rangers sit astride her
neck like bobsledders. Someone slips a hood over the giraffe’s
head so she can’t see. Another threads a device into a nostril to
collect data on the animal’s breathing. More than a dozen people
surround the giraffe to measure her, collect samples of her skin
and DNA, and pick off ticks, while sloshing water on her side
to keep her cool. With the effects of the etorphine reversed, the
animal is fully conscious, but calm. Nonetheless, everyone stays
back from her long and powerful legs, which can deliver a lion-
disemboweling kick.
At the giraffe’s head, Fennessy kneels down and begins to
attach the tracking device—a black box, no bigger than a pack
of cards. Some people call it a collar, but it’s not meant for the
animal’s neck. Nearly two decades ago, when Fennessy’s team
first tried tracking giraffes with GPS, it used gigantic collars
adapted from those used on elephants, but the giraffes just bent
their heads and slipped the devices off. It also tried fixing the
collars in place with elastic straps, but feared this might restrict
the animal’s esophagus. Head harnesses weren’t quite universal
enough to fit the unique head shapes of each giraffe species,
and creating one for each species was too expensive. Eventu-
ally, the team hit upon the perfect solution: Fix the tracker to
a giraffe’s ossicones, the pair of hornlike structures on top of
the animal’s head.
Giraffes hit each other with their ossicones, so these structures
are thick, bony, and insensitive, with only one nerve at their base.
When Fennessy drills a hole in one of them, his subject barely
reacts. He threads a steel bolt through the hole, and fastens the
unit in place. Once it’s secure, the hood is removed, the men on
the neck get off, and the giraffe lifts her head. The seven vertebrae
in her neck—the same number as in a human’s—are connected
by ball-and-socket joints like those in our shoulders, so instead
of lifting up like a rigid beam, her neck snakes upward in an
almost reptilian way. She staggers up, and Fennessy slaps her
on the rump to get her moving. After a few unsteady steps, she
walks off. Somehow, whether through her reportedly excellent
(but seldom tested) eyesight, or through low, infrasonic calls (that
have long been suspected but never documented), the mother
detects her hidden calf, and makes a beeline toward it.
A whole crew of scientists and veterinarians is required for the giraffe-collaring
process, during which the 1,500-pound animal is kept awake and stabilized.