Denisa celebrated her 29th birthday this month with a custom-made cake made from her favorite treats — hay seeded with pellets, onions and peppers, and decorated with hibiscus flowers. The dazzling cake was served to the geriatric giraffe by her devoted keeper Adam Levy. “It had all the stuff she loves,” he says fondly.
In the wild, if giraffes reach 25, that’s a lot. Captivity coupled with care can extend their lives by a few years and sometimes rather more. The oldest known giraffe died in 1995 at the extraordinary age of 40, and even then had to be put to sleep by the San Antonio Zoo because she was clearly failing.
Not so Denisa, though her age shows. Her face and body look gaunt, as happens to the aged when muscles lose tone. Her skin is looser: her cheeks and forehead are wrinkled. She can’t bend over to drink any more, as giraffes must do. Her joints clearly ache, and when it gets so bad that she doesn’t show up to eat, they give her painkillers. “When they pass around 20 or do, giraffes often get joint problems,” says Levy. “Once this happens in nature, and they can’t run from lions, that’s the end.”
In the wild, she’d have been dead a long time ago, from dehydration or predation or both. How does the Safari keep her alive, kicking and wolfing down flower cake?
Basically, by removing the dangers that plague giraffes in the wild — not least, parasite infection — and noticing when they’re in trouble. “A lot of times you don’t know wild animals are sick because it’s not in their interest to show sickness,” Levy explains. “If they demonstrate weakness, they get singled out by predators. So they act as if all is well, and then in the morning you come to work and find them dead in the yard.”
Giraffes seem especially prone to having their keepers coming in the morning to find them dead in the yard. Nobody ever called giraffes the Einsteins of the quadruped set: they seem to have smarts on the level of a cow, not a dog or even a parrot, but they do have curiosity. And they seem to have a propensity, in zoos, of sticking their heads where their heads do not belong, and then dying.
One solution is to make sure the giraffe enclosures in zoos don’t have places they might stick their heads and die. Certainly Denisa never did that. In fact, she’s never even been sick. With germs, that is.
“In everyday life giraffes need to bend over to reach the waterhole or the river. They need to make spread their front legs and lower their head 5 meters or however tall they are to drink,” says Levy. “Denisa hasn’t been able to do that for years now.” So the Safari did what any right-minded zoo would do. It built her a trough 2 meters high.
Food and mating, that’s it
“Denisa was born in the Netherlands and moved to Israel at the age of 2. She was our first giraffe cow,” shares Safari spokeswoman Sagit Horowitz. She had seven sons, which have been sent around the world to take part in breeding programs. Then she had three daughters with whom she still lives, and then a last son.
The giraffes get along nicely, says Levy, though as Denisa slowed, she began to have difficulty competing for her place at the pellet trough. (They have hay all day but pellets are a treat.) The Safari’s solution: to give her the nutrient-rich pellets in her own bucket. The other giraffes’ response to that ploy: They tried to eat her pellets. The Safari solved that by having a keeper serve Denisa while raising a hand to keep the other giraffes, circling like long-legged sharks, at bay. They don’t want to be touched so that does the trick.
So are giraffes herd animals? Not exactly, and one shouldn’t misinterpret seemingly social behavior as anything but coincidence, Levy says.
“They can seem super smart. One of them, Dikla, Denisa’s daughter, was looking at a branch, reached for it with her tongue, grabbed it and pulled it down and the rest of them stood and ate from it. She gained nothing from it, she was just pulling the branch down. When it slipped away from her, she grabbed it again and they ate again — but no, they’re not social,” Levy says.
Giraffes are not interested in play, he says. While they have curiosity it isn’t about one another.
In fact their “herds” are called fission-fusion herds: a given giraffe may amble from one herd to a different one during the day. Who knows if they even notice. But while they have safety in numbers, the most intriguing thing giraffes do socially is to maintain nurseries.
“A few mothers guard the rest of the kids while the others wander off to feed and drink,” says Levy. “They have mother-calf relationships but once they’re grown, they don’t keep to that social behavior. Food and mating, that’s it.”
So giraffes are a few rungs down from elephants, who have complex social interactions and can be trained to do complicated things. As for the giraffe, if you get yours to tolerate your horrible presence, that’s an achievement.
“They’re wild animals,” Levy points out, which means, They. Do. Not. Want. You. Anywhere. Near.
Or to be touched. They do not want to be patted, though they appreciate your fennel fronds and will take them from your hand gently with their velvety long black tongues. Denisa did too. Yes, Haaretz went there. And refrained from patting her soft, wrinkled cheeks.
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