Baby Giraffes Get Their Spots From Mom - National Geographic

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Having bigger, rounder spots seems to correlate with a higher survival rate for young giraffes, the paper found. The authors note that it’s unclear exactly why that might be the case–some hypothesize that the spots help camouflage the animals. But the spots may also impact the animal’s ability to regulate its temperature, besides perhaps having other unknown but useful properties.

giraffesa giraffea reticulated giraffea reticulated giraffea Masai giraffeA reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) and a Rothschild's giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi), two giraffe subspecies, photographed at Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure in Salina, KansasPhotograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark

“We realized that we know very little about mammalian coat patterns in general,” says Lee, an associate research professor at Pennsylvania State University, who co-founded the conservation organization Wild Nature Institute with Bond.

"We've never looked closely at what they mean.”

Julian Fennessy, a co-founder of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and one of the world’s leading experts on the animals, who wasn’t involved in the study, says “the findings are scientifically valid and interesting, but of course this is one sample set.” It would be great to compare this work with research done on giraffes in other areas, and on different species, he says.

The most recent relevant work on giraffe spots dates to 1968, Lee says, when a well-known giraffe expert named Anne Innis Dagg found evidence that spot size, shape, color, and number were likely heritable. But, Lee says, our understanding of genetics has advanced dramatically since then and Dagg’s research was done with a relatively small zoo population. “No one had really tested it in a wild population.”

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