{"id":289959,"date":"2026-02-18T13:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289959\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T13:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:03:08","slug":"giraffes-have-ridiculously-high-blood-pressure-much-higher-than-humans-so-why-doesnt-it-kill-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289959\/","title":{"rendered":"Giraffes have ridiculously high blood pressure \u2013 much higher than humans. So why doesn\u2019t it kill them?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/facts-about-giraffes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Giraffes<\/a> are best known for their very long necks, but we shouldn\u2019t overlook the elongated limbs of the tallest animal in the world.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re famed for the adaptation that allows them to reach succulent leaves in the acacia canopy that shorter animals can\u2019t access.<\/p>\n<p>But this extreme feature comes at a cost: namely the energy required for the heart to pump blood up to the head against gravity. As a result, giraffes have high blood pressure, more than twice that of most mammals at an average of 200-250mmHg.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.biologists.com\/jeb\/article\/228\/20\/jeb251092\/369564\/How-long-limbs-reduce-the-energetic-burden-on-the\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Researchers at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and the University of Pretoria, South Africa<\/a>, have found that by raising the heart closer to the head, the giraffe\u2019s long legs help alleviate some of this burden.<\/p>\n<p>Studying the fossil record of the giraffe family shows the evolution of long legs actually preceded their long necks. <\/p>\n<p>Yet long limbs can be a disadvantage too, especially when it comes to escaping predators: the cumbersome splayed stance of a giraffe at a waterhole leaves them vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>Leg length and neck length have co-evolved, allowing giraffes to exploit the longest distance between a heart and an erect head recorded in any terrestrial vertebrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giraffes are best known for their very long necks, but we shouldn\u2019t overlook the elongated limbs of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-289959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}