Generations of pupils have learned it in biology lessons: the long necks of the giraffes would have made it possible for them to nibble the highest leaves from the trees. Now there are evidence that it may have been different. A team led by the Chinese Academy of Science supports the thesis that a long neck offered advantages in the fight for partners in the “Science” journal.
The group examined the fossilized remains of extinct relatives of the giraffes, believed to have lived in northern China 17 million years ago. With the help of 77 fossils, the paleontologists reconstructed that the animals once had a massive skull and a helmet-like headdress. In combination with special vertebrae and joints in the neck and neck, this is said to have helped the animals to beat their heads against each other in the fight.
For decades, researchers have been discussing why giraffe necks are so long. Both the hypothesis that the neck brought feed advantages and the thesis that he offered sexual advantages leave questions open. The feed hypothesis does not explain why giraffes stayed a lot larger than their competitors for over a million years. Followers of the reproductive hypothesis, on the other hand, have to find a reason why females also have long necks. The authors of the current study suspect that the sexual advantage was the driving force in the development of the long giraffe neck, while the feed advantage was only a welcome side effect.
