Giraffes and Zebras

So here's my first non-Goomba post. Don't worry. Goomba will be back soon.

I remember learning my animal noises as a child. The dog's "woof," the cat's meow, the donkey's "hee-haw." I could recite them all. Some kids could do times tables, I could do a gorgeous choir of barnyard noises. Now once I left the barnyard realm, things got tricky. Some animals didn't appear to make noises. One of my favorite "mute" animals was the giraffe. So tall and full of spots that always looked like delicious pancakes to me. Around the same time that I began to ponder giraffes, Manute Bol started to play for the Sixers.

One time, I great great court side seats from a rich friend and I clearly could hear Manute talk during the game. At the time, this proved that giraffes made noise, but my Dad corrected me. Manute equals man, giraffe equals animal. Great. I now understand the racist subtext of my assumption that Manute Bol was a giraffe, but that sorta thing is pretty innocent when you're five.

Anyway, years later, in an eighth grade science class the teacher told us that many animals made the storied "neighing" noise. Horses, ponies, zebras. And giraffes. I literally fell out of my seat, dropped to the ground shocked. Giraffes neigh? No way. But I never questioned. Never looked it up for proof. I accepted this as a fact. Just one of those things. But now that I'm nearly 27 I want answers. Do giraffes neigh? So I googled "what noise do giraffes make?" I wanted to keep it open ended, not causing the google search to generate false positives. The first sight I looked at - a subset of Discovery Channel called "Dear Digger Doug" - claimed that giraffes barely make any noise. And if they did make a noise, it would be a bleat like a calf. Interesting, but no mention of neighing. Another site confirmed the bleating and also said giraffes grunt. Loudly too. But still no neighing... So I caved and typed "neighing giraffe" into google... And I got plenty of hits. Hundreds, thousands. A few references to neighing giraffes. Tons of people asking "do giraffes neigh" or "I thought they didn't have voiceboxes" but nothing definitive.

So my conclusion? Giraffes probably don't neigh. They probably aren't mute either. Whether or not they have voice boxes, I can't really tell. I'm sure I could search more but I don't have a research assistant and my head hurts.

More Goomba tomorrow.