The Giraffe’s Long Neck

The Giraffe’s Long Neck
From Evolutionary Fable to Whole Organism
By Craig Holdrege
Nature Institute Perspectives #4
104 pages, paperback, $12
ISBN: 0-9744906-3-6

This book provides a comprehensive picture of the giraffe's biology and ecology and also discusses the complex and controversial issue of its evolution. Since Craig Holdrege's intention is to break through the strictures of narrowly confined conceptions of the giraffe and of evolution, neither card-carrying Darwinists nor Creationists will be happy with this book.

Contents:

Introduction
Evolutionary Stories Falling Short (or Why Evolutionary Science Needs a Holistic Foundation)
Lamarck and Darwin
The Long Neck as a Feeding Strategy
Alternative Explanatory Attempts
Does the Giraffe Really Have a Long Neck?

The Unique Form of the Giraffe
A First Context – The Giraffe as an Ungulate
Soaring Upward
Mediating Extremes: The Giraffe’s Circulatory System

The Giraffe in its World
In the Landscape
Sensing
Floating over the Plains
“Necking”
Lofty- and at a Distance
The Developing Giraffe
Feeding Ecology
The Intertwined Existence of Acacia and Giraffe
Summing up

The Giraffe and Evolution
Thinking about Evolution
Okapi and Giraffe
Fossil Giraffids
A Temporal Pattern of Development
An Overriding Morphological Pattern
The Ecological Perspective
Nested Contexts
Back to the Whole Organism

References and Bibliography