How Giraffes Got Long Necks Is Shown In Fossils, Study

Some animals do seem to poke their necks into everything, and the giraffe isn't an exception. Perhaps the necks evolved in order to help them get more vegetation in the higher trees or to cultivate a specialised technique to fight.

New research shows that the lengthy necks stretched in many stages, and "one of the animal's neck vertebrae stretched first toward the head and then toward the tail a few million years later," according to natureworldnews.

"It's interesting to note that that the lengthening was not consistent," Nikos Solounias, a giraffe anatomy expert and paleontologist at New York Institute of Technology's College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in a news release.

"First, only the front portion of the C3 vertebra lengthened in one group of species. The second stage was the elongation of the back portion of the C3 neck vertebra. The modern giraffe is the only species that underwent both stages, which is why it has a remarkably long neck."

Scientists looked at 71 fossils---nine extinct and two living animals.

The research has included a "computational tracking model" of the manner in which the evolution happened. The study is published in Royal Society Open Science.

"We also found that the most primitive giraffe already started off with a slightly elongated neck," Melinda Danowitz, a medical student in NYIT's Academic Medicine Scholars program, added in the release. "The lengthening started before the giraffe family was even created 16 million years ago."

But even as the modern giraffe's neck got longer, its cousin okapi, which is the only other living member of the giraffe family in Africa, was exhibiting shorter necks.