Giraffe up. The calf emerges head and front legs first, having broken through the fetal membranes, and falls to the ground, severing the umbilical cord. The mother then grooms the newborn and helps it stand up. A newborn giraffe is tall. Within a few hours of birth, the calf can run around and is almost indistinguishable from a one-week-old. However, for the first 1–3 weeks, it spends most of its time hiding; its coat pattern providing camouflage. The ossicones, which have lain flat while it was in the womb, become erect within a few days. Mothers with calves will gather in
Southern giraffe binomial name "Cervus camelopardalis". Morten Thrane Brünnich classified the genus "Giraffa" in 1772. Once considered a subspecies of the conglomerate "Giraffa camelopardalis" species, recent studies proposed the southern giraffe as a separate species of a reorganised genus "Giraffa", under the binomial name "Giraffa giraffa". However, the taxonomic scheme has been criticized, and currently the IUCN recognizes only one species of giraffe with nine subspecies. Two subspecies of southern giraffe are proposed. The Cape subspecies of the southern giraffe has dark, somewhat rounded patches "with some fine projections" on a tawny background colour. The spots extend down the legs and get