Bring on the giraffes!

I read somewhere* a few months back that there may be taxonomic changes coming for giraffes - instead of one species (Giraffa camelopardalis) with six subspecies, there are actually at least six separate species, and possibly as many as eleven.

Something led me to "Linnaeus' Legacy # 3," at Greg Laden's Blog, this evening. Amongst other things, he links to two recent posts on this subject: "Now We Are Six," at A Blog Around the Clock, and "There Are More Giraffe Species Than You Think," at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted).

Fascinating.

And on the less serious side, Coturnix's post led me to "Those Silly Giraffes -- Humorous Comment Contest," also at Living the Scientific Life:

What do you think Noah's Ark looked like with six (or is it eleven?) species of giraffes on board? Please show us in a picture because as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

(Giraffes are clean animals, you know - they have cloven hooves and chew their cuds - so there'd have to be seven pairs of each species....)

And that last post led me to this wonderful post from The Digital Cuttlefish.



* Tet Zoo, I think, but I'm not going to look it up.