How did the giraffe get such a long neck?

One famous storyteller said that "the giraffe used to look just like other grazing animals in Africa." But then he spotted the fresh leaves on some high branches. Those look better, he thought to himself. So he reached and reached -- and stretched and stretched.[1] 

His neck grew longer, but so did his pride. In fact, said the storyteller, he became too proud to bend his neck and eat the food closer to the ground. So only those giraffes who were tall enough to reach the highest branches survived. All the others died.

Those long-necked giraffes who reached the highest branches had baby giraffes who would grow tall like their them. And, as time passed, the surviving giraffes evolved: their necks grew longer and longer.

Charles Darwin tried to give a more scientific explanation. Since it's written in an old-fashioned style, it may be hard to understand:

"...the individuals which were the highest browsers and were able, during [droughts], to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved.... By this process long-continued... combined no doubt in a most important manner with the inherited effects of increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe."[2]

Is that really true?

Think about it. If short-necked giraffes die because they couldn't reach the high branches, what would have happened to the young giraffes? Their necks would be much shorter. If they starved to death, there would be no adult giraffes! It doesn't make sense does it?

But there are other reasons for not believing that "any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe," as Darwin said. Let's look at them one by one.

1. Has anyone found fossils of short-necked giraffe herds that prove an earlier stage of evolution?

Answer: No.

2. Did short-necked giraffes die because they couldn't reach food?

Answer: No. Like all the other animals, they could bend down and eat the food closer to the ground. The belief that giraffes always seek the high branches is not true:

"According to the competition hypothesis, giraffes use their long necks to advantage during dry seasons, when food is scarce; but, in fact, the opposite is observed in the field. ...

"...'females spend over 50% of their time feeding with their necks horizontal [a behavior so common it is used to determine the sex of animals at a distance]' and 'both sexes feed faster and most often with their necks bent.' These observations, they conclude, suggest 'that long necks did not evolve specifically for feeding at higher levels.'"[3]

 

3. What if their necks were longer than their legs? How do they reach the leaves near the ground?

Answer: They just spread their front legs apart. That's what they have always done to drink water.

 

4. What happens to a giraffe's head when it bends down to drink? Since his head is below his body, does it fill up with blood and start throbbing? Does it feel strange -- as your head would if you were upside-down for a while?

Answer: The blood vessels in a giraffe's neck have special valves that control the flow of blood. From the beginning, the giraffe was created with all the body parts it needed to survive. If it only had a long neck without the special valves or its very large heart, it would have died:

"The giraffe’s heart is probably the most powerful among animals, because about double normal pressure is required to pump blood up the giraffe’s long neck to the brain. With such high blood pressure, only special design features prevent it from ‘blowing its mind’ when it bends down to take a drink.
     "Equally marvelous is the fact the blood does not pool in the legs, and a giraffe does not bleed profusely if cut on the leg. The secret lies in an extremely tough skin and an inner fascia that prevents blood pooling. This skin combination has been studied extensively by NASA scientists in their development of gravity-suits for astronauts."[4]

 "..it is not possible for evolutionists to make up a plausible scenario for the origination of either the giraffe's long neck or its complicated blood pressure regulating system. This amazing feature generates extremely high pressure to pump the blood up to the 20-foot high brain and then quickly reduces the pressure to prevent brain damage when the animal bends down to take a drink. After over a century of the most intensive exploration for fossils, the world's museums cannot display a single intermediate form that would connect the giraffe with any other creature." Luther D. Sunderland [5]

 

5. Could all those special parts of the giraffe simply evolve together by chance? Was it all an accident?

Answer: No! The notion that this all happened by chance is a real 'tall story'!" If you still believe that popular myth, please go to Darwin's Black Box and read about the amazing information code in DNA. The only explanation that makes sense is in the Bible:

"And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good." Genesis 1:11, 25

 

See also Origin of life and What Darwin didn't know

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Notes:

1. Rudyard Kipling, "How the Giraffe Got its Long Neck," Just So Stories.

2. Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species (1859), p. 202, at http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c22.htm

3. "THE TALLEST TALE" at http://www.whyevolution.com/giraffe.html

4. Lynn Hofland, B.S.E.E., "Giraffes … animals that stand out in a crowd," at http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/555.asp

5. Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), pp. 83-84. t., pp. 26-27. http://remnantprophecy.sdaglobal.org/Library/Creation-Evolution/ARCHAEOPTERYX.pdf or http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:tX7CyPuIrsIJ:remnantprophecy.sdaglobal.org/Library/Creation-Evolution/ARCHAEOPTERYX.pdf+%22rudyard+kipling%22+giraffe+%22long+neck%22+&hl=en

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