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Social organization andbehavioral patterns of the captive giraffe at the Bronx Zoo

The social organization of giraffe has only recently been discovered to have a multi-level structure, and the scientific community lacks the proper understanding of how problems facing giraffe, both in the wild and in captivity, will affect this social organization. In an effort to develop understanding regarding both social and behavioral patterns of captive giraffe, we collected nearest neighbor data and behavioral observations, totaled all affiliative interactions, calculated association strengths, and compiled records of abnormal behaviors of the zoo herd

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Relationships between male giraffes’ colour, age and sociability

In species in which males signal competitive ability through secondary sexual traits, males with different levels of trait expression may adopt different reproductive tactics to maximize their reproductive success. In fission-fusion social systems, the most dominant males often roam widely in search of females in oestrus, and thus exhibit different patterns of sociability from subordinate males that utilize alternative reproductive tactics. Giraffes, Giraffa camelopardalis, are rare among mammals in that they are sexually dimorphic in colour, and colour is hypothesized

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