Giraffe in African bush. Africa. Far, mysterious, inaccessible, but so desirable

What do we know about giraffes? Well, first of all, that the giraffes belonging to the order of ruminant artiodactyls (giraffe family) are the tallest animals in the world. The growth of males can reach a height of up to five and a half, even six meters. This is approximately the height of a two-story house. Moreover, about a third of the growth of a giraffe is its neck. Even newborn giraffes that are born, falling from a height of about two meters, are taller than most people.

In addition to zoos, where most people are used to seeing them, giraffes live in Africa, south of the Sahara desert, on grassy and shrubby plains, where individual trees and tall shrubs grow, the leaves of which are giraffes and feed. Thanks to its unique neck, tall walking giants, like sentinels, rise above the savannah, having the opportunity to taste the tops of the acacias. Giraffes "lick" the leaves of the trees with their long, rough tongue. And the males eat the tops themselves, and the females, which are a little lower, "lick" the leaves about a meter lower.

Deforestation is one of the most serious threats facing humanity. Forests accumulate carbon and counteract climate change, help prevent soil erosion, and regulate the water cycle. Forests have a particularly positive effect on the environment if there is a wide variety of trees. Moreover, forests are important for the overall health of the planet. Their benefits to society and the diversity of life impose on us the responsibility and duty to protect the planet from deforestation.

Why does a giraffe have such a long neck? - children often ask. Scientists have long asked this question and found the answer. However, there is another riddle: what kind of giraffe must have a heart in order to deliver blood to the head, which is removed from the body by a distance reaching sometimes two meters? Firstly, the blood pressure in giraffes is almost two times higher than in other mammals. And the second thing that surprised zoologists was the size of the animal's heart. Scientists have found that the heart of giraffes is much smaller than other animals with a similar body size, and it has very thick walls. In addition, the special structure of the giraffe's circulatory system and the blood vessels themselves withstand high blood pressure, and the blood itself is pumped by a small but very strong heart. Well, then, why do giraffes have such a long neck? For three reasons. Firstly, thanks to the long neck, the giraffe can reach young shoots growing on the tops of trees. Secondly, they can see further, which increases their safety. And thirdly, the long neck improves thermoregulation due to an increase in body surface area.

Giraffes look very interesting and unusual: bright spotty coloring, high thin legs, long neck, on the end of which a relatively small head with large ears and small horns is located. By the way, despite the fact that at first glance all giraffes look alike, they are all different. The catchy pattern on the skin of a giraffe is absolutely unique - like fingerprints of a person. Giraffe prefer only plant food, especially he adores eating acacia leaves. In ordinary life, giraffes are peaceful and good-natured.

They usually keep in small groups, in the heat they rest in the shade, covering their brown eyes with thick eyelashes and grinding the gum in the mouth. In the morning and in the late afternoon, they feed on trees or shrubs. The food helps to capture a long muscular bluish-black tongue. It is almost half a meter long, not much shorter than an adult's hand.

It is already difficult to surprise modern tourists with luxurious comfortable hotel rooms, picturesque landscapes of nature and a variety of recreational attractions. If you are a great traveler, you've probably already visited many countries of the world, you've had time to see a lot and are seriously considering how you can be truly surprised.

In Kenya, there is an unusual hotel Giraffe Manor, which is located 12 kilometers from the country's capital, Nairobi. The name of the hotel translates as Giraffe Manor and, of course, it speaks for itself. Gorgeous giraffes peacefully roam around the entire property belonging to the hotel, they are happy to meet all the tourists who come here and even safely look into the house for another batch of treats.

Some paleontologists believe that a crisis accompanied by mass extinction is a completely normal stage in the development of a natural community the size of the earth's biosphere. At the heart of any historical event, including the biosphere crisis, are very real causal relationships. Most scientists now think that volcanoes launched the Perm catastrophe. It is shown that exactly at the time of the biosphere crisis (that is, 252 million years ago) in the territory that is now called Western and Central Siberia, a trap province formed - a system of active volcanoes, not limited to point craters, but occupying a continuous extended field. It must have been grandiose. The crust crushed in many places spewed out a sea of molten basalt, which flooded 1.6 million square kilometers - this is the area of modern Iran.

Current basalt flooded a vast territory and gradually hardened, creating an absolutely flat lifeless plain along which new basalt waves flowed from new eruptions. But all this was only a prologue to the crisis. Trap volcanoes inevitably threw huge volumes of volcanic gases into the atmosphere - carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and others. It had a lot of consequences. First, carbon dioxide intensified the greenhouse effect, causing massive global warming. Secondly, volcanic gases increased the acidity of sea water, and this, for purely chemical reasons, made life difficult for corals and echinoderms: the carbonates that make up the solid skeletons of these animals simply dissolve in too acidic water. Thirdly, hydrogen sulfide is toxic for most living organisms, especially at concentrations thousands of times higher than the current atmospheric one, namely trap volcanoes created such a level of hydrogen sulfide.

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