Zoos urged to dump mutt giraffes

Daktari JG said:
I could see if it was a case of Joe Exotic wanting to import giraffe, but for legitimate zoos this would seem to be just a matter of communication to overcome that ignorance.
But either way- again with enough money- you can (unfortunately ) do whatever you want.
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Even if US Zoos did have that kind of money, there's just not incentive for them to shut down the "Reticulated" breeding program in favor of importing more Masai and/or trying to import pure individuals from overseas.

Both programs are doing just fine, and nowadays there's a nice portion of the generic stock that look essentially just like pure Reticulated, with those individuals taking precedence in the program as opposed to "fresh" hybridizations such as what has happened in Toledo and I'm sure other facilities. As has already been brought up, your average guest isn't going to know or care that the species of giraffe they're looking at isn't pure. They're being told what they're looking at is Reticulated, and when the goal is to educate guests on giraffe, surely the current stock is fulfilling that purpose, no?
The argument of Zoo populations being backups in the event of native extinction is neither here nor there as well, but surely in such an event European holders would be looked to to lend their giraffe first due to transfer logistics. At the end of the day, despite it being disappointing that the US only has one legitimate breeding program, I just can't see there being enough of a negative impact that the AZA would make drastic changes and/or make zoos willing to pay insane amounts of money to import.
 
DavidBrown said:
You are incorrect that the giraffe species were arbitrarily split. The four species are reproductively isolated and are defined by both morphological (skull shape, pelage) and genetic differentiation. Relative to giraffe evolutionary history, the reproductive isolation is not recent.

It does matter evolutionarily what giraffes live where from a conservation perspective.
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I don't come online to engage in long back and forth arguments for which there is no way to "win", but ALL taxonomy is arbitrary! Animals do not evolve in small boxes - humans try to categorize them that way, and there is no set way to do it. I favor "lumping" into diverse single species over splitting almost all the time, but because taxonomy is a human construct subject to intrepetation of complex natural systems that evolve in a continuum, this is neither inherently more, or less "correct." Giraffes however (regardless of coat colour or ossicone development patterns) do not seem to have behavioral barriers to reproduction (only natural isolation preventing most species from meeting) and indeed, the reticulated giraffe's wild population is derived from a prior interbreeding event between northern and southern giraffes. Giraffa as a genus is about 8 million years old, and has been in Africa for about one million years. A few hundred thousand is simply not long enough to truly make these animals different from each other except in the most superficial of ways.There is no reliable marker for how much genetic change, or phenotype variation, can exist to determine when one species becomes another.

I would place polar bears firmly as a brown bear subspecies too (granted, a very interesting phenotype), if it were up to me, the barriers there are also environmental isolation rather than true genetic or behavioral incompatibility, which would generally be two benchmarks for me to consider species truly distinct evolutionary. But I will admit, this is a more extreme example than giraffes (and giraffes are more so than mainland tigers, though frankly... I would not keep Sumatrans apart either, there are many other less represented and less popular carnivore species which would benefit from captive breeding programs in their place...)

The genetic differences are not substantial enough to cause even slightly reduced cross fertility or viability of hybrid giraffe offspring either. A hybridized giraffe population, at worst, is like going back a couple hundred thousand years and recreating a proxy of the ancestral (sub)species that spread out and gave rise to the slightly variable, slightly less genetically diverse populations across the current range. It would very quickly (on the timescales evoluion occurs) be able to spread out and evolve into new localized populations, if space allowed. While it would also come with better genetic diversity to handle an inevitably small population spread out in a captive environment until that time.
 
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Sheather said:
I don't come online to engage in long back and forth arguments for which there is no way to "win", but ALL taxonomy is arbitrary! Animals do not evolve in small boxes - humans try to categorize them that way, and there is no set way to do it. I favor "lumping" into diverse single species over splitting almost all the time, but because taxonomy is a human construct subject to intrepetation of complex natural systems that evolve in a continuum, this is neither inherently more, or less "correct." Giraffes however (regardless of coat colour or ossicone development patterns) do not seem to have behavioral barriers to reproduction (only natural isolation preventing most species from meeting) and indeed, the reticulated giraffe's wild population is derived from a prior interbreeding event between northern and southern giraffes. Giraffa as a genus is about 8 million years old, and has been in Africa for about one million years. A few hundred thousand is simply not long enough to truly make these animals different from each other except in the most superficial of ways.There is no reliable marker for how much genetic change, or phenotype variation, can exist to determine when one species becomes another.
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Taxonomy is not arbitrary. Species concepts are used as testable hypotheses and evidence is gathered to test the hypotheses. I was on the IUCN Giraffe and Okapi Specialist Group task force to evaluate how many species of giraffes there are. We went through a transparent process evaluating the evidence for speciation. The giraffe species are not interbreeding in the wild, which is where reproductive isolation is measured. If you put the giraffe species together in a zoo, yes they will interbreed, which is why there was for a century only thought to be one giraffe species, but what happens in a zoo enclosure is not what is going on in the wild.
 
It is arbitrary! People decide how to divide up things into categories to better understand them, these categories did not exist before people, and will not exist after them. Life just is.

The fact that the giraffes will readily interbreed can just as easily be taken as evidence their isolation is the artificial situation, and reintroducing them together is natural.

I think they have a better idea of what they are than we ever will!
 
Sheather said:
The fact that the giraffes will readily interbreed can just as easily be taken as evidence their isolation is the artificial situation, and reintroducing them together is natural.
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Except you are disregarding the fact that the populations of Northern, Reticulated and Masai Giraffe in Kenya are reproductively isolated despite being sympatric - and hence not geographically isolated.

As you say, "they have a better idea of what they are than we ever will!" :rolleyes:;)

Given the fact that in prior discussions you have indicated that you would be in favour of lumping any waterfowl species capable of fertile interbreeding, I fear that reasoning with you will be futile and suggest that @DavidBrown avoids getting into a pointless debate.....
 
> based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

It's not like the laws of physics. It's all human whim to categorize living things at all. It's more like categorizing a billion black and white pebbles in different colors in more or less broad categories of grey. Fundamentally, the only certain measure of uniqueness in all living things is at the individual level, and even that fails with identical siblings/clones. Everything else is a wide spectrum of grey.

TeaLovingDave said:
Except you are disregarding the fact that the populations of Northern, Reticulated and Masai Giraffe in Kenya are reproductively isolated despite being sympatric - and hence not geographically isolated.

As you say, "they have a better idea of what they are than we ever will!" :rolleyes:;)

Given the fact that in prior discussions you have indicated that you would be in favour of lumping any waterfowl species capable of fertile interbreeding, I fear that reasoning with you will be futile and suggest that @DavidBrown avoids getting into a pointless debate.....
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I never heard of a situation where they still coexisted in the wild. I would love to see the source if you have it, as that is so interesting!
 
Chlidonias said:
I think you might need to check the definition of arbitrary because taxonomy certainly isn't arbitrary.
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Sheather said:
> based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

It's not like the laws of physics. It's all human whim to categorize living things at all. It's more like categorizing a billion black and white pebbles in different colors in more or less broad categories of grey. Fundamentally, the only certain measure of uniqueness in all living things is at the individual level, and even that fails with identical siblings/clones. Everything else is a wide spectrum of grey.
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I feel like you have zero understanding of how science works. You quote the definition of arbitrary and yet somehow think that supports your position.
 
Chlidonias said:
I feel like you have zero understanding of how science works. You quote the definition of arbitrary and yet somehow think that supports your position.
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And you seem to really think that taxonomy is something real in the way the world functions and not a fundamentally imprecise attempt to group similar things in a way that helps humans to understand it? It's a human system being thrown over the branching tree of evolution that existed for billions of years before it and trying to make it neat and tidy when it simply isn't most of the time. Modern taxonomy is clade-based and focuses on related lineages and their divergence from each other over time, so it's improved drastically since it was invented, but it's still whatever people say it is. It is literally impossible to draw a correct line where one species ends and one begins with closely related lineages. To suggest this can ever be 100% correct is nonsensical. It would only be possible if living things were created as-is with no intermediates. If the zoo hybrid giraffes are indeed hybrids, then how long do they have to bred together before they can be fit into another neat little box as the 5th species? Versus expanding the umbrella of giraffe to include all of them, every one of which the zoo population could introduce genetics back into.

There are extremely genetically similar animals that don't mate for behavioral reasons. There are single genetically similar animals with more diverse morphology than giraffes. There are genetically diverse animals that still mate both in the wild and in captivity. It's not always possible to objectively determine whether any of them is a species or not. You can argue that they are or aren't based on the available criteria but someone will come to the opposite conclusion. Just in one of the articles I recently pulled up about the split, there was reference to people who think there are 8 giraffes - and still others who have reservations about the 4 giraffe concept.


"Rasmus Heller, a population geneticist at the University of Copenhagen who carried out the 2024 study on giraffe DNA, cautioned that drawing sharp lines between evolving populations can be tricky. “Nature doesn’t fit nicely into species,” said Dr. Heller, who was not involved in the new assessment.


He noted that the four proposed species have mixed their genes together from time to time, as giraffes from different populations encountered each other and mated. In fact, the reticulated giraffes are hybrids; their ancestry is about evenly split between northern giraffes and southern giraffes.

“Giraffes are a hard nut to crack,” he said. “You could reach the conclusion that there are different species, or you might not.”

Fred Bercovitch, a conservation scientist at the Anne Innis Dagg Foundation who was not involved in the assessment, said the controversy over giraffes may stem from their vast range. “The more widespread a species is, the more likely you are to have disagreements among scientists about what to call these groups,” he said.

For his part, Dr. Bercovitch thinks the I.U.C.N. team did not go far enough. The data leads him to view almost all of the subspecies as distinct species; instead of four species, he would recognize eight."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/science/giraffes-conservation-dna.html
 
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Sheather said:
Modern taxonomy is clade-based and focuses on related lineages and their divergence from each other over time...
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So, you have said this ... do you still also say it is arbitrary? Because you can't have it both ways. It is either based on a system or it is arbitrary.
 
Chlidonias said:
So, you have said this ... do you still also say it is arbitrary? Because you can't have it both ways. It is either based on a system or it is arbitrary.
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It can be both, and it is both! The system exists, and it is inherently imperfect because it is made by humans and for humans, and the evolutionary tree of life was not.

A few articles:


speciesism and the future of humanity Biology, Culture, Sociopolitics Session 1: Species, the arbitrary constructs of biodiversity?

Towards a global list of accepted species I. Why taxonomists sometimes disagree, and why this matters - Organisms Diversity & Evolution

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317798929_Taxonomy_anarchy_hampers_conservation

It is just as impossible to prove there are not 4 or 8 giraffes as there are 1. I am just not on the side in favor.
 
The AZA position for many years was to phase out hybrid giraffes and phase in Masai giraffes as a purebred population -- which is what nearly everyone would want, but the population for Masai giraffe seems to not be breeding well or expanding as hoped, so there is little reason to ask established facilities to phase out giraffe entirely if there are no purebred replacements available, and it therefore makes sense the hybrid population has remained active. Giraffe are not only an incredibly popular animal but also one of the easier charismatic megafauna to keep - so smaller zoos like Racine and Lehigh maintain giraffe as well - and many zoos make an upcharge on selling giraffe feedings now, one of the many interactive experiences becoming ubiquitous. I can understand that no zoo would want to phase out giraffe for the sake of being on a waiting list for something that may not happen. We want to imagine at times that they have a choice and are making the wrong one, but I think many are choosing to continue maintaining hybrid herds for lack of availability of the Masai species.

Even if imports could be done, Masai Giraffe are rare outside the United States so I'm not sure where we could source them, and starting a purebred Reticulated or Baringo population (are there other Nubian subspecies in captivity?) in the United States would either require a particularly large import (likely increasing the level of difficulty such an import would require) or just become like the Masai population, a growing group but ultimately unable to supersede the entire hybrid population, and I imagine Reticulated in particular would run a much higher risk of future/repeat hybridization given they would look identical to the existing hybrids to a layman. It really is a shame an import seems to be impossible.

The debate on taxonomy has been an interesting discussion to read, fwiw.
 
StoppableSan said:
They would if they could. Cattle industry is a behemoth, and they do actually have understandable concerns regarding communicable diseases. That being said, the Masai giraffe population has seen a slow but steady increase...
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The recent population increase in Masais has been silver lining of this ugly cloud, and it’s unfortunately a pipe dream to hope for the importation any other giraffe species in the near future. Especially during the “current administration”.
 
What's the Status of Masai Giraffes, and how many zoos have them and breeding them?
 
StoppableSan said:
They would if they could. Cattle industry is a behemoth, and they do actually have understandable concerns regarding communicable diseases. That being said, the Masai giraffe population has seen a slow but steady increase...
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I think the only thing that could be negotiated if you wanted to import foreign giraffes is to first get good at IVF for them, to the point where you perfect it, and then ferociously lobby to be able to transport eggs and sperm
 
Thomas said:
What's the Status of Masai Giraffes, and how many zoos have them and breeding them?
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They are held around 38 North American facilities total, all but two located in the United States. around twenty-five of which hold at least one individual of either sex. As for facilities I'm experienced with, Racine has generally only held a bachelor group and I believe only has a single individual currently.
 
JVM said:
They are held around 38 North American facilities total, all but two located in the United States. around twenty-five of which hold at least one individual of either sex. As for facilities I'm experienced with, Racine has generally only held a bachelor group and I believe only has a single individual currently.
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The Los Angeles Zoo, where I volunteer, has them alongside the Santa Barbara Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, although it also has a Generic Giraffe Herd.
 
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