Everybody seems to like giraffes !  They are easily seen in Kruger Park, browsing on the trees, crossing the road in front of you, etc.  They are really, really tall--somehow much taller than they seem even in a zoo--perhaps because you are sitting down, level with their knees.

Each one has a different skin pattern.  Some are more towards the Masai look, as the one above with irregular smaller spots, and some are more towards the reticulated pattern, with larger squarer spots.

When they are right in front of you on the road, they seem really big--as though you could drive right under them.

Sometimes they hurry, but not usually.  This is a female--the hair on the ends of her horns is not worn off as a male's would be--see pic 1.  They are not horns at all, by the way, they are bony projections of the skull and the male has another smaller one on his forehead.

Giraffes are browsers, that is, they eat leaves rather than grazing on grass.  They get right into the thorniest trees and wrap their long tough tongues around a branch and strip the leaves, sliding right by the thorns without getting stuck.

I don't know what this one was doing, but isn't it cute!  Perhaps he saw a passing lilac breasted roller.

Then he turned and looked at us as if to ask what did we think was so funny?  Don't know quite how he tucked that other ear all the way back--makes him look a little lopsided.

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