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
Northern giraffe and outside of protected areas. The earliest ranges of the Northern giraffes were in Chad during the late Pliocene. were once abundant in North Africa. They lived in Algeria since early Pleistocene during the Quaternary period. They lived in Morocco until their extinction around the year AD 600, as the dry climate of the Sahara made conditions impossible for the giraffes. They are also extinct in Libya and Egypt. Northern giraffe The northern giraffe ("Giraffa camelopardalis"), also known as three-horned giraffe, is a proposed species of giraffe native to North Africa. In the current IUCN taxonomic scheme, there is only