Giraffid Horns

Abstract

HENSHAW¹ has accepted Coope's premise² that giraffes have retained the skin-covered horn-like structures of the palaeomerycids, from which they are descended, because there have been no significant changes in the climate—the hypothesis being that the formation of antlers is a response to environmental temperatures. But the nature of the giraffe horn can be seen in relation to the form of the animal and its social requirements, without any reference to the cervid antler³. As Henshaw states, the horn-like structures of the giraffe are analogous to the summer antlers of deer, in that they have points of resemblance, but there is no justification for invoking climate as an explanation of their form. They are specialized structures in the giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis L. of which the skin covering is no more velvet-like than that covering the rest of the animal's body, and it is certainly not vascular like the velvet skin of antler buds.