masai African Giraffe Jay and Alex

This graph shows that in the last 1000 years the Masai giraffe population has crashed.
The Masai is affecting carrying capacity due to the mass numbers of Masai Giraffes.

Birth: The Masai Giraffe population could rise higher than it is right now if the African habitat had ideal food and water source, also if the amount of population of their predators decreased that would be a helpful factor in giraffe population. Giraffes are killed more than they produce causing a decline in population.

Death: Around 50-75 percent of calves die within the first few months due to predation. Giraffes use their hooves to kick of predators of their babies but often times it's to late. Lions and Rhino's often team up on giraffes as their prey. Giraffes are poached because they're bone marrow and brain are thought to cure HIV and Aids.

Immigration: Giraffes like to move to places with tons of grass to eat, tons of water to drink, and lots of space to roam around without being attacked. These factors cause giraffes to move to certain areas causing carrying capacities to skyrocket. This causes competition between other animals for food which can turn into fights between predators.

The Masai giraffe is located in the dark green locations in Africa and don't often migrate because they have found a habitat perfect for them.

Emigration: When the giraffes emigrate the long journey often contains harsh weather and limited resources. They also don't have an exact plan of where they're traveling to, so finding a good habitat is essential to their survival. They use clumped dispersion when they emigrate to other areas. Emigration often ends in death for these giraffes because of the hardships along the way which affects the population..

This is an example of clumped dispersion.

The Giraffe population in a certain area could rise on a logistic graph because of emigration of other giraffes. Eventually when the giraffes reach carrying capacity (the amount of animals a certain area can hold due to limited resources) the graph will level off.

Two density-dependent limiting factors that could cause the giraffe population to decrease could be disease and poaching. Disease could start from one giraffe and spread rapidly because they use clumped dispersion which would cause the disease to spread rapidly. Poaching is another factor that would affect the population because giraffes are very useful in the medical field, also their fur is used for coats and other clothing.

Storms and droughts are two examples of density-independent limiting factors for giraffes. A drought could cause many deaths due to dehydration and competition for water. Storms could help these droughts by bringing rain for a water source, these two factors would negatively and positively help the giraffe population.

Created with images by Andy Hay - "West African Giraffes"

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