The Giraffe's Neck: A Failed Icon of Evolution
Posted: Sunday, February 08, 2009
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
The giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) has probably got its name from the Arabic word zerafa or ziraafa, which means ‘charming'. There is indeed something enchanting in these brown-eyed beauties of the African Savannah. Charles Darwin did not use the giraffe's neck as an icon of evolution in the first editions of The Origin of Species. He did, however, mention it in the 1872 edition.
Before Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), a French naturalist, suggested that organisms can pass on acquired characteristics to their offspring. According to Lamarckism, the giraffe got its long neck by stretching it to reach the succulent leaves of trees. Long-necked giraffes passed on this trait to their offspring.
In the Darwinian view, long-necked giraffes were more successful in finding food on the African savannah and got more offspring than their short-necked cousins.
Although the Darwinian explanation is interesting, it is not based on real science but on a wish to prove that evolution is real. It is nothing short of a just so story.
Unfortunately, some high school biology texts have used this icon as proof of evolution.
Giraffes live on the savannah where most of the trees are rather short acacias (Acacia). Often giraffe's heads can be seen towering above the trees.
Usually, giraffes do not eat from the taller trees, such as the baobab (Adansonia digitata) and sausage tree (Kigelia africana). Actually, the long neck is at times a handicap for giraffes. They often have to bend it downwards in order to eat the thorny yet obviously delicious leaves of the acacia.
The giraffe's blood pressure system speaks of incredibly intelligent design. Since its head can tower over five meters (15 feet) above the ground, we would expect that bending to drink water from a pool would be a real hazard for a giraffe. But it is not.
I have seen tens of giraffes in the savannahs of Kenya. Called twigas in Swahili, their feeding habits do no match with the ones described in high school biology texts.
But perhaps the writers of the high school biology textbooks have never seen a giraffe in its natural habitat.
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Top-level comments on this article: (6 total)"Actually, the long neck is at times a handicap for giraffes"If this is true, it is a problem for intelligent design just as much as it is for evolution.If the neck is a hindrance more than a benefit, why did God inflict it upon giraffes?If the neck's benefits outweight the hindrance, then even an over-simplified model of evolution explains it just fine!Having said that, evolutionary theory can easily explain imperfect adaptation - perhaps the long neck evolved when the trees the ancestral giraffes fed on were taller, and perhaps now the longer neck is being selected against.Hi Benjamin, haven’t heard from you for a while. You have certainly missed the gist of my article. The post is not about evolution in general, it is about Darwinists using false arguments. In my old high school biology textbook, the neck of the giraffe was presented as proof of evolution. It is clearly a false assumption.
Your suggested explanation amounts to typical Darwinian storytelling, which, I suppose, you do for ideological reasons. IMHO, You should be more careful of using theological arguments in science.
BTW, Regards,
Joel
Well, argument in Genensis 1:2 -The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep water. The Spirit of God was hovering over the water. At least Moses knew this long before modern scientists discovered that Earth was covered w/ water in the beginning.Yes he did. Thanks for reading.
Hi Joel,The giraffe's neck might be better explained by sexual selection. Males fight with each other for access to estrous females by striking their heads against their opponent, a well-documented behaviour called 'necking', and the force of impact is positively correlated with neck length. Since dominant males tend to impregnate most of the females in a herd, necking may have provided a very strong selection pressure in favour of longer necks.
Female giraffes certainly find longer necks more attractive, allowing longer-necked males to sample their urine for estrus (using the "Flehman response") more often than they allow shorter-necked males.Thanks, anon. Interesting suggestion. However, we have no way of checking whether it is true or not. I suspect strongly that all views of giraffe ancestry are in the realm of speculation. BTW, sexual selection has lately been criticised quiet severely by some scientists.
You might know that I take a skeptical view to neo-Darwinian evolution since I believe it is not supported by enough evidence.
regards,
Joel
That's not true. Plenty of studies show that sexual selection is responsible for the long neck of the giraffe. Easily testable. Look it up.Then again, you'll likely delete this comment.Interesting comment. Actually, even the late Stephen Jay Gould, no friend of creation, did not believe in the standard Darwinian explanation for the giraffe’s neck. He wrote: ”The Tallest Tale is the textbook version of giraffe evolution -- a bit of a stretch." The thought it was ”an indefensible, unsupported, entirely speculative and basically rather silly story.”
Two comments, one of Ben Morrish and one by anon. removed for basically repeating earlier errors (while using slightly different words). My basic argument stands: at least one high school biology textbook resorts to just so storytelling in order to propagate Darwinian evolution.".
Ben Morrish, you keep on repeating the same things over and over again. Spamming will definitely not help your viewpoint..
Dear Joel,Your article was very interesting. Thank you. I understand that your article is not against Darwinism, but, do you have a theory as to why the giraffe has such a long neck?Thanks, Mark. To be honest - I'm not sure. The okapi, which looks a bit like a giraffe, has a shorter neck and manages just fine. There is a lot of variety in nature, which sounds a bit like design, only some folks see red when they hear the word, so I better be careful.Regards, Joel
I love your solution to the problem of biological variation. "God did it! Case closed!" That's really wonderful. We should apply that to all the sciences and see where that gets us.Ever heard of a similar explanation: natural selection did it?! It has been used quite a bit, actually.
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