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
Giraffe living giraffes consist of multiple species. The researchers suggested the existence of four species, which have not exchanged genetic information between each other for 1 million to 2 million years. Those four species are the northern giraffe ("G. camelopardalis"), southern giraffe ("G. giraffa"), reticulated giraffe ("G. reticulata"), and Masai giraffe ("G. tippelskirchi"). Since then, a response to this publication has been published, highlighting seven problems in data interpretation, and concludes "the conclusions should not be accepted unconditionally". In 2016 there were an estimated 90,000 individuals of "Giraffa" in the wild. In 2010 there were more than 1,600 in captivity at