Dwarf giraffe Seriously?! Research teams from the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) spend a lot of time looking at giraffe, but two particular giraffe recently caused them to do a double take. In amongst the other giraffe that they regularly monitor in Uganda and Namibia, they found two dwarves!
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CF’s monitoring team in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda saw their “mini-giraffe” for the first time when he was still a young calf in December 2015, and spotted him again during annual surveys in 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, another team in Namibia photographed a four-year-old giraffe on a private game farm in 2018 that was still the size of a calf! He was found again during their latest survey in July 2020. Each giraffe (dwarf or not) is identified by its unique coat pattern, so the researchers can follow individuals over time. Being diligent scientists, the GCF teams do more than just watch the giraffe they find – they measure them using a clever, non-invasive method known as photogrammetry. Once calibrated to different camera focal lengths using objects of known sizes, one can get a fairly accurate measurement of giraffe legs and necks from suitable photographs. This means that the scientists can determine the growth rate of young giraffe and the average height and bone lengths of the giraffes in each population without having to sedate and physically measure any of them. This technique certainly came in handy when studying the two dwarves (the Ugandan was nicknamed “Gimli” after a dwarf from the Lord of the Rings, while the Namibian is known as “Nigel”). Emma Wells, who led the Namibian GCF survey on the game farm notes: “the Namibian
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The bones measured by GCF scientists. Figure from Brown and Wells (2020).
