A drunk giraffe

Bachelor giraffes getting ready to neck. Photo by David Lansing.

The reticulated giraffes around Sarara are mezmerizing. There patterns are so much more distinct than the Masai giraffes in the south whose hides look like they’ve been washed in hot water making the dark brown bleed onto the white. The coats of reticulated giraffes, however, look crisp and freshly pressed.

This morning we stopped not far from camp and watched a handful of twigas, including a couple of young ones, move like shadows among the thorn trees. As we came up, they stopped, ears out, their large heavily lashed eyes looking inquisitively at us. The young ones, uncertain as to our intent, lollopped back to Mum in that delicious slow-motion amble they have.

They blend in so well with their surroundings that it was a few minutes before we realized that not far from this little mama-toto group were a few young bachelors, doing a little neck-knocking, as Calvin calls it, the mostly-gentle sparring matches where they slap their necks against each other to determine who gets to hook up with the women when the time comes.

Hardy, who always seems to be thinking about food when we’re out game-watching, asked Calvin how they tasted. “They’re delicious,” Calvin said with great enthusiasm, and there then ensued a long conversation about which other animals were or weren’t worth eating. Forget about bush pig or wart-hog, Calvin said. They’ve got all kinds of parasites. Same with zebra.

“Really?” Hardy said. “I’ve always heard that zebra are pretty tasty.”

Can be, Calvin said, but the problem is that even though zebra can have fat bellies and look quite healthy, they might actually be starving to death and full of parasites. Even giraffes have their health problems out in the wild and are susceptible to various epidemics, like rinderpest, a viral disease also called cattle plague. Evidently in the 1960s, an epidemic wiped out half of the giraffe population of Kenya.

On a cheerier note, Calvin told us that giraffes like to get a little drunk every once in awhile. They’ll eat the berries from marula trees which will then ferment in their stomachs and get intoxicated. Not a good thing to be drunk in the bush. Check out this short video which shows the effects of animals eating marula berries—it’s hilarious.