Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to Garonga! My name is Johnson. I am a guide and have been for plus or minus 15 years. Today I want to share the exciting story about a recent giraffe sighting.
It was a classic winter’s sunny day and we were enjoying a morning game drive. My guests were from America, they had been on game drives in other African countries but not in South Africa. The drive itself was a little bit quiet but anyway it was nice to be out for safari. We shared some information about the trees, birds and animal tracks and signs.
On our way back to the lodge we found the giraffes on Mapogo. Mapogo is the name of one of the game drive roads in the reserve that crosses through an open area. The giraffe were on that area feeding and one giraffe was chewing on a bone! It was interesting to notice that for myself after guiding for a long time and for my guests it was the first time to see that, because normally giraffes eat leaves.
Giraffe chewing on bones to increase their calcium intake! ©Sophie Barrett
The sighting was so special to us as often we don’t see that behaviour, because it is rare to see giraffe chewing bone. In summer Giraffe have enough food but in winter they do not as most of the trees that giraffe like to feed on lose their leaves. In winter sometimes giraffe they also find old bones on the ground and chew them for calcium. It was interesting to my guests as they noticed that behaviour for the first time, but they had heard about that from other game drives that they have been on. On that exciting sighting we spent about 15 minutes and after that we continued with our way to the lodge as we know that the bush will not show us everything at the same time.
