The relationship between physical injury, body condition and stress-related hormone concentrations in freeranging giraffes
A physiological stress response can be triggered by a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli, but minimal information is available about the physiological stress response related to pain in wildlife. Recently established techniques now allow the non-invasive measurement of faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) concentrations to monitor the physiological stress response in giraffe. We examined the consequences of injury of various severities and loss of body condition in relation to glucocorticoid output in free-ranging giraffes. Body condition (BC) was visually estimated