Giraffes have been misunderstood and are just as socially complex as elephants, study says

[UngulateNerd92]

With their crane-like necks, spindle legs and knobbly knees, giraffes are among the best loved and most recognizable of animals.

Despite their elevated stature, however, giraffes have kept their surprisingly intricate social behavior under wraps.

Once perceived as humble creatures that focused solely on feeding their majestic bodies, one book from 1991 described the giraffe as "socially aloof, forming no lasting bonds with its fellows and associating in the most casual way."

Giraffes have been misunderstood and are just as socially complex as elephants, study says - CNN

 

[Mr. Zootycoon]

Personally, I'm not even surprised at this. The more we look into the social lives of animals the more complex they seem. I remember reading about a group of biologists realizing the guineafowl (generally considered to be on the low end of bird intelligence) that share the area with their study population of baboons had a very similar and very complex multi-level social system. Earlier, I read an article about how nightingales have wide-ranging communication networks, and know the songs of each and every neighbouring male. Even tigers, once thought to be a prime example of a solitary species, appear to have an actual social system with frequent intra-specific contact. Their solitary lifestyle it seems is more a product of our pressures on their habitat, as low conspecific and prey densities forces tiger to adopt more other social strategies.

Sometimes I wonder about how many rich and complex social systems are hidden in plain sight, right under our very noses. Take gulls for example. They are common across much of the globe and are intelligent, wide-ranging, long-lived curious, adaptable and very social. I just cannot image that the flocks of black-backed gulls that soar over my area on their way to Africa are just random birds casually flying together without any relationship. Yet the social lives of gulls are poorly understood. And it's not just gulls. How rich are the inner lives of the woodpeckers drumming in the nearby forest? Do the lapwings, foraging together on the field margins, actually know each other? Which social systems govern the interactions among weasels, among magpies, among field mice? And that's just my own back yard. Our world, perhaps, may be home to huge variety of rich and complex social systems, far beyond what we can possibly imagine know.

 

[birdsandbats]

If others are interested by complex social lives of animals hidden in plain sight then I highly suggest you read Out on a Limb by Benjamin Kilham.