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There Are More Giraffe Species Than You Think
For the longest time, people thought there was just one species of giraffe. DNA studies argue we were wrong
How many species of giraffes are there? Well, it may surprise you to learn this, but some people have actually thought about this throughout the decades, and they decided that there is only one species, Giraffa camelopardalis. However, a paper published in BMC Biology convincingly demonstrates that giraffes are actually comprised of at least six, and possibly as many as eleven separate species instead of just one, as originally thought.
According to findings published by a research team led by David Brown, a geneticist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), these giraffe species live in different regions of sub-saharan Africa and show distinct and easily visible differences in their patched markings that are so different that these populations had previously been classified into separate subspecies.
However, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear microsatellite loci DNA analyses of six of the nine subspecies reveal that these populations are more distinct than previously thought; for example, the reticulated giraffe (Currently: Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) in North Kenya, which has reddish round spots; and the Masaiβ¦