When it is time for mating, giraffes pay close attention to how the smell of their mate’s pee.
For giraffes, finding a mating partner can be a long process. The animals don’t necessarily have a breeding season, they don’t make mating calls and they also don’t give visual clues that they’re ready to mate, according to Live Science.
So how do giraffes find mating partners?
When giraffes want to identify or find their partners, a male giraffe called a bull, nudges a female giraffe, called a cow, and sniffs her genitalia.
Sometimes he has to nudge her a few times, but eventually, the female giraffe widens her stance and urinates for about five seconds in the male giraffe’s mouth.
The male giraffe performs what’s known as a “flehmen response” by curling back its upper lip, baring its teeth and breathing in with its nostrils closed for several seconds.
Other animals, like horses and goats, also use the flehmen response to transfer scents to the vomeronasal organ above the roof of their mouth.
A male giraffe detects chemicals from the female’s urine called pheromones, which trigger a social response in some animals. It can also give an indication of when she’s fertile and ready to mate.
Lynette Hart, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said that while most animals wait until urine is on the ground before they smell it, the giraffe does not wait as it is too tall to do that.
Hart is the lead author of a new study on the behaviour of giraffes. Her husband, Benjamin Hart, was the co-author of the study, which has been published in the Animals journal.
During their field trips to the Etosha National Park in Namibia, they observed different behaviours in giraffes.
The two were able to be up close with the giraffes as they observed them at their water holes. Usually, giraffes are observed at a distance and often run away when they are approached.
But Lynette Hart said. “This was really unique, to be right up close.”
For giraffes, sex is conducted at a precarious height above the ground and lasts only a few seconds.
If the female giraffe falls pregnant, she will gestate for a whopping 400 days before she gives birth standing up, so that her baby giraffe is well-developed enough to stand and walk when it’s born.
Compiled by Mashudu Mabila
Pictured above: Giraffes
Image source: Pexels
