What color is a giraffe's tongue?

The average length of a giraffe's tongue is about 18 inches. Its color is black with some shades of purple. The back of it is usually pink. The prehensile tongue is used by the animals as a tool for getting food (leaves mostly). Male and female individuals prefer to feed on leaves separately. Thus, males tend to grasp leaves from the top of the tree, while females get leaves on the level of their height. Giraffes spend up to 20 hours eating. That is why the dark color of their tongue is a kind of protection of the bulk of the tongue from possible sunburns.

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87 Comments

anthonygriffin

This article although in reference to the giraffe's tongue size & color. It gave me flashback of the Danish zoo that killed a giraffe with a spike to the head. Because of over population of the animal at that zoo's exhibit. Afterwards, cutting up the animal & serving the meat to the Lion's exhibit of the zoo. The Lion's exhibit suffered the same fate of the male being killed as well. Talk about being given a last supper of sorts. A simple situation would have been to donate the animals to another zoo exhibit.

Renee Verrill

I was getting a picture made in front of the giraffe exhibit at the zoo when I was a kid. The giraffe leaned over the rail and gave me a big kiss. I never even saw her moving closer.

Rhonda Wentz Bondurant

That's horrible! Who are the real animals?????

Daniel Weaver

Wasn't there any kind of verbal outrage from the rest of the world when the Danish Zoo put down giraffes and fed them to the lions, just because they felt they had too many? Some fricken heads should have rolled over that!

Franklin Hall

What?!! Kevin, you don't have your doctorate in giraffe tongueology? Get with it, man!

Janice Lea Vanlandingham

The giraffe is one of three creatures who have this feature, the other two are the polar bear and the chow chow dog.

Rhonda Wentz Bondurant

I knew it was purple. But, but did not see that among that choices. So, I picked black.

anthonygriffin

Sarah Hearn-vonFoerster, taking the life of any living thing. Isn't exactly like recycling an item into another way of using it in life. There's no comparison to the two of them at all.

earlepg

I saw giraffes munching on leaves during visits to the zoos in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. At all three of those locations their tongues looked black.

earlepg

Karin Johansson, Sounds like the zookeepers regressed to medievel times.

earlepg

Nicole Toma-Tolman, Releasing animals to the wild may not be feasible is they were born captive or have been in captively excessively long. Better to search for another appropriate facilty.

Cheryl Love

sweetqb, the ones I fed at San Francisco Zoo had black tongues.

Cheryl Love

speedqueen, the ones I fed at the San Francisco Zoo had black tongues.

Cat Woman

My daughter loved feeding the giraffes carrots at the Audubon zoo in New Orleans.

speedqueen

I’ve seen giraffe tongue they are more blue/grey than black

George Ogilvie

Its always blue Garbage question!

Irene Townsend

Nicole Toma-Tolman, If you release captive animals into the wild they would most likely not survive, and that would be sad.

Irene Townsend

anthonygriffin, Problem with trying to give their animals to other zoos, is that certain animals like the Giraffe, zebras, and even lions are getting over populated in most zoos and can't take any more. May need to control breeding better