Saturday, March 12, 2011

Did that giraffe just lick a lollipop?

Why do giraffe's have blue/black tongues?


This question was posed to me in class on Friday (along with several other questions) so I figured this would be the first one I would try to answer since I did not know the answer to the question. Surprisingly, after visiting the San Diego Zoo website I found a fantastic Giraffe facts page and learned that Giraffa camelopardalis is suspected to have a blue/black tongue to prevent them from getting sunburned. Pretty cool hypothesis, huh?  I searched several primary resources but could not find any actual research until why giraffe's tongues are blue/black, so indeed it's something I will look into further! 

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