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How Giraffes Mate, and Why It Matters

2016-12-20 · explainer · John · 3:42 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Explainer · tags: community lore, timely hook

Prompted by a tweet missing their giraffe-sex videos, John explains how inefficiently giraffes mate, why their falling populations struggle to recover, and argues that whether giraffes and the planet's biodiversity survive the Anthropocene is a human choice.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Glitter from his kid; greeting; a tweet missing the days of giraffe-sex videos

  • ★ John warns there is glitter on his face throughout the video, from his kid, and that the video is about giraffe mating. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:17 — Giraffe sexuality and mating: same-sex mounting, pee tasting, two-second intercourse, 400-day pregnancy; an inefficient process

  • ★★ John says according to one study up to 90% of giraffe sex occurs between two males, with occasional same-sex mounting between females, so heterosexual sex is not the dominant form, though it makes the babies. — 00:00:17
  • ★★ John says giraffes can mate year-round but tend to do so in the rainy season, when food is less scarce, because they are less stressed and pregnancy is less daunting. — 00:00:32
  • ★★ John says the male pokes the female's butt with his head, which sometimes makes her pee, then smells or tastes the pee to tell if she is fertile, which she is about four days out of every two weeks. — 00:00:46
  • ★★ John says giraffe intercourse lasts under two seconds and is followed by over a year of pregnancy, usually producing one calf often six feet tall and over 150 pounds at birth. (playful) — 00:01:07
  • ★★★ John says giraffe reproduction is inefficient: males take at least seven years to mature, pregnancy lasts 400 days, usually one vulnerable calf results, so falling populations struggle to recover. — 00:01:22

00:01:50 — Giraffe populations down 40%, now threatened; humans reshaped the planet: biomass of humans, livestock and wild animals

  • ★★★ John says a new report finds giraffe populations have fallen around 40% since the 1980s, to about 98,000, and the IUCN has just moved them to threatened status. — 00:01:55
  • ★★★ John says the cause of the giraffe's decline is humans, mostly through habitat destruction and hunting. — 00:02:07
  • ★★★ John says the combined weight of living humans is around 300 million tons, livestock around 700 million tons, and all wild large animals less than 100 million tons. — 00:02:12
  • ★★ John says this is part of what geologists mean by the Anthropocene, the geologic age of humans radically reshaping the planet. — 00:02:43
  • ★ John adds, as a digression, that Earth's bacteria have a combined biomass north of 350 billion tons. — 00:02:49

00:02:55 — Giraffes will survive only if humans want them; we are deciding the planet's biodiversity for millions of years

  • ★★★ John thinks giraffes have a reasonably good chance of surviving the Anthropocene, not because of their necks or lion-killing kicks, but because humans like them. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says humans want giraffes in the world, or at least he hopes so, and it is our choice: if we lose the giraffe, the only reason will be humans. (hedged) — 00:03:08
  • ★★★ John says thousands of species have gone extinct since the Columbian Exchange began a little over 500 years ago, almost all directly attributable to humans. — 00:03:17
  • ★★★ John says we are deciding right now what Earth's biodiversity will look like, not for 100 or 1,000 years but for many millions of years. — 00:03:26
  • ★★ John says maybe, if we can accept that responsibility, we will begin to take it more seriously. (hedged) — 00:03:35

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description says John re-introduces Nerdfighteria to giraffe sex, long a staple of the vlogbrothers channel. — video description · Nerdfighteria, Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ video description: The video's figures for the combined weight of humans, livestock and large wild animals come from Yuval Harari's book Sapiens. — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Giraffes mate in the rainy season when food is plentiful — 00:00:40

    “plentiful food makes the prospect of a giraffe pregnancy slightly less terrifying.”

  • After the pee test, the male waits until 'it's time for the magic to happen' — 00:01:05

    “The magic being a period of intercourse lasting less than two seconds.”

  • A newborn giraffe is small and slow, vulnerable to predators — 00:01:44

    “but you can't, like, pick it up and put it in your pouch and hop away because you're not a marsupial.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: giraffe

Also: Anthropocene · Biodiversity · Columbian exchange · habitat destruction · homosexual behavior in animals · human impact on the environment · International Union for Conservation of Nature

Only in the description or credits: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind · Yuval Noah Harari

Also centred on giraffe: People Who Love Giraffes Who Love Giraffes (The Song) · Giraffe Love and Other Questions ANSWERED · Giraffe Sex: A Terrifying Introduction to Nature at Work (and Play) · Giraffes are Way More Complicated Than We Thought

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