Acacia and Giraffes?: International Development Research Centre

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ID: 9488

Added: 2002-09-10 10:44

Modified: 2002-10-23 9:37

Refreshed: 2010-03-13 16:36

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Acacia and Giraffes?

Document(s) 1 of 4

In January, we received the following e-mail message
through our web-site:
"Good Morning. Could you pls. help us out. We are just
filling in a contest on Kenyan Wildlife. Has the acacia tree
any strategy to protect itself against being eaten by
giraffes?

- Like issuing smelling gases
- Or issuing a poisoned bitter taste
- Or do the leaves move to protect themselves
- Or they do nothing”

I must say, most of us were stumped, as our expertise is limited to bandwidth and teledensity. Luckily, with the help of environmentalist Deryl Weilbach at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, with whom IDRC has a partnership to deliver the Acacia program in Southern Africa, we came up with the following response:

“The Acacia tree has thorns, which protect it against overgrazing, but giraffes don’t seem to mind the thorns too much. As there are many leaves (compound) on Acacia trees and also many trees in the savannah (relative to the numbers of giraffe), and the giraffe usually browse the top (at level with their height), overgrazing is not usually a problem unless the carrying capacity of the savannah is greatly exceeded.”

Document(s) 1 of 4

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