Animals There are now officially four different species of giraffe
After a long period of research, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has now officially recognized four species of giraffe. For a long time, it was considered certain that the African mammals with the long neck were a single species.
21.08.2025, 13:43
SDA
However, the four species - in addition to the reticulated giraffe, the Masai giraffe, the northern giraffe and the southern giraffe - began to develop independently of each other around 230,000 to 370,000 years ago, as the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (Senckenberg Nature Research Society) announced in Frankfurt am Main on Thursday.
According to the study, there is little or no genetic exchange between them - so the different species do not usually mate in the wild. Back in 2016, Senckenberg researchers, together with the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, which is dedicated to the protection of giraffes in Africa, published research findings that pointed to clear genetic differences between the giraffe species.
Impact on conservation concepts
The official recognition by the IUCN has implications for future conservation concepts. After the giraffe as a single species was classified as "endangered" in 2016, the IUCN now wants to assess the endangerment of the four giraffe species for the Red List of Threatened Species in a next step.
According to the IUCN, the distinction between the four different species enables "a more nuanced understanding of the threats and opportunities" to protect the giraffes in their respective habitats in Africa.
"Exceptional"
"Describing four new large mammal species after more than 250 years of taxonomic research is extraordinary - especially for such iconic animals as giraffes," explained evolutionary geneticist Axel Janke. "Our genetic analyses show that the differences between the giraffe species are just as clear as those between brown bears and polar bears."
Together with numerous local partner organizations, the researchers collected tissue samples from giraffes from all over Africa over the course of a decade, some of them from regions that are difficult to access and politically unstable, such as Chad, Niger and South Sudan. The examination of around 200,000 DNA sections from a total of 50 giraffes provided clear evidence of four separate species. Studies on giraffe skulls supported the genetic findings.
Between 1985 and 2015, the number of giraffes on the entire African continent shrank by around 40 percent to around 98,000. According to the IUCN, there were differences in the individual regions. According to the organization, the numbers in southern Africa increased significantly in 2019, while a worrying decline in populations was recorded in East and Central Africa.
