Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Giraffes… tallest of all animals, yet notoriously poor basketball players. Horn-headed, yet anointed by Pope Benedict The Giraffe-Lover as the ‘least Hellbound’ of all God’s creatures. Fans of U2, yet dismissive of The Joshua Tree album. Is there any animal more paradoxical than the giraffe (Venezualan Paradox Beetle notwithstanding)?

The male giraffe has an average height of 5.3 metres (or 17 feet to readers from the 18th Century), with a system of valves and pulleys that ensure blood can be pumped the enormous distance between the animal’s heart and head. Some of the very tallest of giraffes have even been found to have small interdimensional gateways to further facilitate this transportation of blood. In every case, these gateways have proven too small for intergalactic space travel and, hence, cannot be considered viable entry points for extraterrestrial visitations, despite the claims of Erich Von Daniken.

A giraffe obeying the laws of gravity

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the giraffe, however, is that their great height is achieved at birth. Baby giraffes are born with their head at their eventual adult height, leaving their legs floating several metres off the ground. While this provides protection from predators for the newborn baby giraffe it does require highly complex acrobatic movements during the birthing process, with many mothers climbing trees and dangling upside down from the uppermost branches to gain the required birth height. It is perhaps for this reason that increasing number of giraffe mothers are choosing to instead adopt, although the influence of Angelina Jolie cannot be discounted.

The newborn baby giraffe continues to float at his adult height for several weeks after birth until the combined mass of his consumed vegetation eventually allows the full effect of gravity to impact on the young herbivore. Inspired by this observation, the Royal Rhodesian Air Force of the 1930s supplemented a group of young giraffes’ diets with helium cookies, in an attempt to build an unstoppable squadron of flying giraffes.

The helium cookies had the desired effect, allowing the young giraffes to float seveal months longer than they would be able to in the wild. However, their impact was severely undermined by their funny, high-pitched voices, which inspired giggle fits in even the most experienced pilots. A later attempt to switch to the (even lighter) gas hydrogen ended in tragedy when one baby giraffe exploded at the end of his maiden flight, killing all those on board. Oh, the giraffity!

Eventually, of course, all such experimentation on baby giraffes was prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Today, giraffes are allowed to grow down to Earth at their own, natural pace, disturbed only by frustrated basketball scouts, lions and occasional visits by a bemused Adam Clayton. Just as Pope Benedict intended.

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