Giraffes Quotes

Most of the things at the zoo don't look like us. We're one design that works. Our chimp pals sort of look like us, so that's a different take on the same basic design. But fish don't look like us, and giraffes don't. They look a little like us, but not too much. And insects certainly don't look like us, and they work just fine. ~ Seth Shostak

Everything that I love is behind those gates. We have elephants, and giraffes, and crocodiles, and every kind of tigers and lions. And - and we have bus loads of kids, who don't get to see those things. They come up sick children, and enjoy it. ~ Michael Jackson

Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant. ~ David Attenborough

Westwards along the basement, I let myself through a heavy door just beyond the dead giraffes. There was a notice on the wall that read "Departmental cock"
I never did find out what that meant. ~ Richard Fortey

They say that it is one of the most terrifying manifestations in nature: a bull elephant in a state of must. Twin streams of vile-smelling liquid flow from the ducts of the temples and into the corners of the jaws. At these times the great beast will gore giraffes and hippos, will break the backs of cringeing rhinoceri. This was male-elephantine heat. Must: it derived via Urdu from the Persian mast or maest - "intoxicated." But I had settled for the modal verb. I must, I must, I just must. ~ Martin Amis

I knew that a group of tigers was called a streak. I knew that dolphins were carnivores. I knew that giraffes had four stomachs and that the leg muscles of a locust were a thousand times more powerful than the same weight of human muscle. I knew that white polar bears had black skin beneath their fur, and that jellyfish had no brains. I ~ Jodi Picoult

This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans. ~ Brian Swimme

All men are not slimy warthogs. Some men are silly giraffes, some woebegone puppies, some insecure frogs. But if one is not careful, those slimy warthogs can ruin it for all the others. ~ Cynthia Heimel

I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lions eat giraffes so they can survive even though the giraffes didn't do anything to the lions, and nobody thinks that the lions are wrong. ~ Matthew Dicks

After all, when 'the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become' He resolved to 'wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them' (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Don't you get it yet,Harriet?" Nick says in total exasperation. "i like that you know about the stars in the rain and the shapes of the clouds and the heartbeat rate of the hummingbird. I like that you know that giraffes don't have vocal cords and the sharks can't stop moving. I like the way you stick your little nose in the air ... ~ Holly Smale

If you were to go to the National Museum in Addis Ababa, you would walk into a huge room filled with literally tens of tons of fossils, and most of them would be elephants and rhinos and hippopotamus and monkeys and giraffes and antelopes and so on. Hominids are very rare in the landscape, and it's very rare to find them. ~ Donald Johanson

Yet the greatest impact of the rise of great gods was not on sheep or demons, but upon the status of Homo sapiens. Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. A terrible flood might wipe out billions of ants, grasshoppers, turtles, antelopes, giraffes and elephants, just because a few stupid Sapiens made the gods angry. Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind. Less fortunate members of the old animist system lost their stature and became either extras or silent decor in the great drama of man's relationship with the gods. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

You may not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms, and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods for processing data. But you should know that this is current scientific dogma, and that it is changing our world beyond recognition. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The wandering elephants, giraffes and buffalos of Tsavo will be kept at bay by a 1.8-meter reinforced concrete and metal mesh fence. ~ Gavin Serkin

Baby rats need rat milk, baby cats need cat milk, baby dogs need dog milk, baby humans need human milk, baby cows need cow milk, baby chimps need chimp milk.. Would anyone believe it if someone claimed adult giraffes need elephant milk? or adult horses need squirrel milk? or adult possums need goat milk? or adult humans need cow milk? oh, wait, no, that last one makes total sense.. NOT ~ Mango Wodzak

I like snakes. I like hummingbirds. There's nothing on earth I don't like. Frogs. Salamanders. The bunnies, the giraffes, the hippopotamuses. ~ Ted Turner

Our souls are made of water, Goethe says. So too, our bodies. There is a flow within us, rising and falling, unidirectional, to the heart. there is a flow without also. We circulate. We are drawn up, and we fall back down to earth again. It's all haemodynamics. ~ J.M. Ledgard

Meditation is another dimension of natural beauty. People talk about appreciating natural beauty-climbing mountains, seeing giraffes and tigers in Africa, and all sorts of things. But nobody seems to appreciate this kind of natural beauty of ourselves. This is actually far more beautiful than flora and fauna, far more fantastic, far more painful and colorful and delightful. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

When I said I wasn't with another girl

the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it's because it wasn't actual sex.
In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.
Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe's neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway
for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still
believe you're there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,
I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I've lied, knowing
I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me
is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I'm scared you're my pink pony.
Hers is dead. It is really sad. You're not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.
I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don't know where to put them.
I mourn like you're dead. If you had asked me to stay,
I would not have said no.
I ~ Jon Sands

In the animal kingdom, lions, tigers and bears - the predators - have closely spaced eyes. Giraffes, rabbits, doves - the preyed upon - have eyes more widely spaced and oriented toward the sides of their heads, because they need their peripheral vision to survive. ~ Patricia Cornwell

Her favorite animal was sea lions. Mine was giraffes. Her favorite movie was Casablanca, which she said was old and black-and-white and very romantic. She tried to tell me what it was about, but it all sounded about as much fun as eating burned bread crusts. ~ Lisa Graff

Girls in New York look like giraffes.
Long neck, long legs, tiny tits and ass.
Girls from L.A rock over sized shades.
And chill all day cause they already paid.
Girls in Miami ... string bikinis and bump techno by Dj Tiesto.
Girls from Detroit like electro
And dance all night till they break they neck yo. ~ Shwayze

Nothing is more important than saving ... the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans. ~ James Lee

To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in general with what is, I believe, known in the world of the film as 'rough stuff.' I have never happeend to come upon the evidence for this idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce-reports it is founded. Nor, as I have explained elsewhere, have I ever been able to see the probability of it, even considered a priori. We are always told without any explanation or authority that primitive man waved a club and knocked the woman down before he carried her off. But on every animal analogy, it would seem an almost morbid modesty and reluctance, on the part of the lady, always to insist on being knocked down before consenting to be carried off. And I repeat that I can never comprehend why, when the male was so very rude, the female should have been so very refined. The cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes. And the loves of the giraffes and the river romances of the hippopotami are affected without any of this preliminary fracas or shindy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I have seen the Virgin
in an appletree at Chartres
And Saint Joan burn
at the Bella Union.
I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.
I have seen the Venus Aphrodite
armless in her drafty corridor.
I have heard a siren sing
at One Fifth Avenue.
I have seen the White Goddess dancing
in the Rue des Beaux Arts
on the Fourteenth of July
and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy
picking her nose in Chumley's. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

When our earliest human ancestors left the trees and moved to the open grasslands of the savanna, they adopted an upright stance. Possessing already this powerful visual system, they could see far into the distance (giraffes and elephants might stand taller, but their eyes are on the sides, giving them instead panoramic vision). This allowed them to spot dangerous predators far away on the horizon and detect their movements even in twilight. Given a few seconds or minutes, they could plot a safe retreat. At the same time, if they focused on what was nearest at hand, they could identify all kinds of important details in their environment - footprints and signs of passing predators, or the colors and shapes of rocks that they could pick up and perhaps use as tools. ~ Robert Greene

It was not all that different from the circus, and it came to town in much the same way. Only instead of elephants and giraffes, there were cameras and microphones. Instead of clowns and cages and tightropes, there were production assistants and trailers and yards upon yards of thick cables. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

Lamarck's Impact

So, how could these "favorable variations" occur?
Darwin tried to answer this question from the standpoint of
the primitive understanding of science at that time.
According to the French biologist Chevalier de Lamarck
(1744-1829), who lived before Darwin, living creatures
passed on the traits they acquired during their lifetime to
the next generation. He asserted that these traits, which
accumulated from one generation to another, caused new
species to be formed. For instance, he claimed that
giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to eat
the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from
generation to generation.

Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The
Origin of Species, for instance, he said that some bears
going into water to find food transformed themselves into
whales over time.

However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor
Mendel (1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics,
which flourished in the twentieth century, utterly demolished
the legend that acquired traits were passed on to
subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell out of
favor as an evolutionary mechanism. ~ Harun Yahya

We all can dance," he said, "when we find music that we love. ~ Giles Andreae

I very much like Kenya. It's hard to beat the Masai Mara and the idea of ballooning across it. I have a great time at Lewa. There's more rhinos than you'll find anywhere. A great part for the children is you can ride horses with the giraffes and the zebra. ~ Mark Burnett

There was no way to have a civilized conversation with that guy. It's like he was raised by giraffes or something. ~ H.M. Ward

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. ~ Michael Klaper

... humans are animals. It would not occur to an ethologist studying ants, lions, wolves or giraffes to argue that 'ultimately' it is the animal's need for food which determines the type of society in which it lives, or its need to reproduce, or its mechanisms of defence against predators, or whatever. On the contrary, he will see the society in question as the outcome of a compromise between a variety of fundamental needs and the environment in which it is set. Precisely the same is true of human societies. [...] all attempts to explain human history in terms of a single factor are misguided. ~ Patricia Crone

If you let hydrogen gas alone for 13 billion years it will become giraffes, rose bushes and humans. ~ Brian Swimme

I have family in Tanzania. I can't even explain the joy of riding through the Tanzania national park and seeing giraffes run across the road and elephants over in a pond and baboons running. ~ Emanuel Cleaver

For me, writing music is a way of processing the world. It's not a concrete thing, as in, "This piece is about giraffes." It's much more of an emotional sort of thing. I want people to find something out about themselves through my music, something that was inaccessible before, something that they were suppressing, something that they couldn't really confront. ~ Missy Mazzoli

Sofia was ice. She was ripples. She was the kind of person who'd sneak into the zoo after hours just to paint an extra spot on a giraffe's neck. She was stubborn. She was lovely. She was the autumn leaf that refused to fall. ~ Michael Ebner

However much you know giraffes, to see one in the wild for the first time feels prehistoric. ~ Jane Goodall

You should try getting some sleep."
Sloane frowned. "Giraffes only sleep four and a half hours a day."
-Sloane ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. A terrible flood might wipe out billions of ants, grasshoppers, turtles, antelopes, giraffes and elephants, just because a few stupid Sapiens made the gods angry. Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Giraffes are fairytale animals, almost heraldic - as if from the land of fables. They have extremely beautiful faces, huge eyes, very sensitive nostrils and oh, blue tongues! ~ Joanna Lumley

We transported eight giraffes, and there are now nine because one gave birth to a male shortly afterwards. They carry their pregnancies very well-they all looked the same. ~ Joanna Lumley

have the neck of a thousand giraffes. ~ Mark Time

Shh! She said. The waiter. He's about to take their order. She leaned back and to her left, closer,closer,closer,her body like a giraffe's neck, until her chair shot out from under her and she landed on the floor. The whole restaurant turned to look. I jumped up to help. She stood up, righted the chair, and started in again. Did you see the tattoo one of them has on the inside of his arm? It looked like a roll of tape.

I took a gulp of margarita and settled into my fallback option, which was to wait her out.

Know what one of the guys at the drive-through Starbucks has on his forearm? Bernadette said. A paper clip! It used to be so daring to get a tattoo. And now people are tattooing office supplies on their bodies. You know what I say? Of course this was rhetorical. I say, dare not to get a tattoo. She turned around again, and gasped. Oh My God. It's not just any roll of tape. It's literally Scotch tape, with the green-and-black plaid. This is too hilarious. If you're going to tattoo tape on your arm, at least make it a generic old-fashioned tape dispenser! What do you think happened? Did the Staples catalogue get delivered to the tattoo parlor that day? ~ Maria Semple

I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Elephants, it turns out, are surprisingly stealthy. As the sunlight fades, other species declare their presence. Throngs of zebras and wildebeests thunder by in the distance, trailing dust clouds. Cape buffalo snort and raise their horns and position themselves in front of their young. Giraffes stare over treetops, their huge brown eyes blinking, then lope away in seeming slow motion. But no elephants. ~ Thomas French

I don't know what to tell you other than the fact that a giraffe's heart weighs 22 pounds and that somebody once told me when flies fall in love, their entire brain is rewired to only know loving each other. When one of them dies, their memory becomes blank. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about waking up next to you during a windstorm at 5 am. ~ Anymonous

The man who believes in giraffes would swallow anything. ~ Adrian Mitchell

Giraffes are completely tranquil - they have no predators as adults because there's not an animal in the jungle stupid enough to go for them. ~ Joanna Lumley

A bit of advice: never read a pop-up book about giraffes. ~ Sean Lock

Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I have a weird thing with giraffes, I don't like their neck ~ Eminem

I think that's how love works. Sometimes it means doing the washing up when it's not your mess, and sometimes it's driving to the airport three times in one week to pick up a loved one, and sometimes it's all unexpected bears and possible surprise giraffes. ~ Jenny Lawson