A giraffe's neck alone is over 2 metres long. Strangely, it has exactly the same number of bones in its neck as you do — seven. Each of yours is the size of a finger joint. Each of a giraffe's is the size of a brick.
Their tongues are even more surprising. A giraffe's tongue is around 45 centimetres long — almost half a metre. It is also blue-grey, which scientists think is a kind of sunscreen, because giraffes spend so much time stretching their tongues up into the sun to grab leaves.
Giraffes eat mostly the leaves of acacia trees, which have huge thorns. Their long tongues curl carefully around the thorns to pull the leaves off. They can eat up to 35 kilograms of leaves a day.
Each giraffe's pattern of patches is unique, like a fingerprint. Scientists who study them can tell individual giraffes apart by their patterns. There are special phone apps now that let park rangers photograph a giraffe and identify exactly which one it is.
