Readers will learn all about baby giraffes, including what they eat and how they fall six feet to the ground when they are born. Amazing photographs of these super-cute animals are accompanied by Fast Facts. This book supports the Next Generation Science Standards on growth and development of organisms, biodiversity, and social interactions in animal groups by exploring such details as how calves learn to stand within a half hour after being born, and how they protect themselves in the wild. Budding scientists can follow giraffe calves as they grow into independent adults.
Hobbs is a giraffe calf. He is growing up in a wild animal park with his mother. When he was born, he was 6 feet tall! He drinks his mother’s milk and slowly grows up until he can run, play, and eat with the rest of his giraffe herd.
Giraffes are the tallest animals in the world. Baby giraffes grow fast. Soon they are almost as tall as their mothers. Baby giraffes' coats blend in with the African grasses. This keeps them safe from lions and leopards. How do baby giraffes grow and change? Read this book to find out! This title also includes a life cycle diagram, a habitat map, fun facts, a glossary, and more!
The bestselling creators of the hilarious Penguin Problems, Jory John and Lane Smith, turn a giraffe's problematic long neck into an enviable advantage in this fun board book. Edward the giraffe can't understand why his neck is as long and bendy and, well, ridiculous as it is. No other animal has a neck this absurd. He's tried disguising it, dressing it up, strategically hiding behind bushes--honestly, anything you can think of. Just when he has exhausted his neck-hiding options and is about to give up, Cyrus the turtle ambles in (very slowly) and helps Edward understand that his neck has a purpose and, besides, looks excellent in a bow tie. Along with a heavy dose of humor comes a gentle reminder about the importance of acceptance.
Baby giraffes are able to stand and run within an hour of being born. Though clumsy, they like to run around and stretch their legs. These fast runners are also fast growers, doubling their height in the first year. Run along with these playful babies in this fun title.
"Darwin (1871) and many African folk legends before him [...] proposed a simple but powerful explanation for the large and elongated shape. Long necks allowed giraffe to outreach presumed competitors, particularly during dry-season bottlenecks when leaves become scarce; (Simmons and Scheepers). However, this old African folk legend which is still commonly taught in high schools, fails to explain, among other things, the size differences between males and females. Giraffe cows are up to 1.5 meters shorter than the giraffe bulls, not to mention the offspring. The wide migration range of the giraffe and the low heights of the most common plants in their diet likewise argue against the dominant selection hypothesis. Also: 1) The fossil "links," which according to the theory should appear successively and replace each other, usually exist simultaneously for long periods of time. 2) Evolutionary derivations based on similarities rely on circular reasoning. 3) The giraffe has eigh t cervical vertebrae. Although the 8th vertebra displays almost all the characteristics of a neck vertebra, as an exception to the rule the first rib pair is attached there. 4) The origin of the long-necked giraffe by a macromutation is, due to the many synorganized structures, extremely improbable. 5) Sexual selection also lacks a mutational basis and, what is more, is frequently in conflict with natural selection ("head clubbing" is probably "a consequence of a long neck and not a cause"; see also Mitchell et al. 2009). 6) In contrast to the thus-far proposed naturalistic hypotheses, the intelligent design theory is basically testable. 7) The long-necked giraffes possibly all belong to the same basic type inasmuch as 8) a gradual evolution from the short-necked to the long-necked giraffe is ruled out by the duplication of a neck vertebra and the loss of a thoracic vertebra. 9) Chance mutations are principally not sufficient to explain the origin of the long-necked giraffe. 10) The intelligent design theory offers an adequate and satisfying solution to the problems and points to numerous "old" and new research projects. 11) Mitchell and Skinner present a good analysis of the selectionist problem; however, their phylogenetic hypotheses presuppose the correctness of the synthetic evolutionary theory, and their claims of "intermediate forms" are unproven (similarly summary Part 2). Part 1 shows why Dawkins and Kutschera are wrong. The scientific facts speak for design."
