Giraffes Get Nutritional Boost From New UF-Developed Food

February 5, 2004

TAMPA, Fla. — Everyone knows they have long necks, intelligent faces and soulful brown eyes. But apparently giraffes also have a sweet tooth.

So say two University of Florida researchers, who have developed a new feed specifically for giraffes in zoos – where, for decades, the African animals have been ordering from a menu designed for cows and horses.

“A lot of effort goes into keeping exotic animals healthy while they’re under human care, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about their nutritional needs,” said Celeste Kearney, a graduate student at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences who is doing the research for her doctoral dissertation..



With the help of staff at Busch Gardens in Tampa – where 15 giraffes live in an open-air habitat – Kearney and her adviser, Associate Professor Mary Beth Hall, are testing a new feed that’s closer in nutritional content to the food giraffes find in the wild.

Interim results indicate the long-necked animals are getting a nutritional boost from the new feed. The researchers report healthy weight gains in some of them, and blood samples from some showed improved levels of nutrients. The feed may even help giraffes produce more milk to feed their young calves, the researchers said.

“We have data to show that this feed makes a difference, including changes in the giraffes’ behavior,” Hall said.

She said the giraffes seem to like the new feed, which is sweeter and contains a different type of fiber than the alfalfa-and-grain diet zoos have traditionally offered giraffes.

Kearney came up with the idea of a new feed while working as a giraffe keeper at the Tampa attraction.

“I was amazed at the diversity of animals we dealt with every day,” Kearney said. “In agriculture, you really only work with a few species that are fairly similar. At a zoo, things get a lot more complicated.”



One thing at the gardens was simple: Many of the herbivorous animals were being fed a hay-and-grain diet similar to the fare typically offered to farm livestock. The world’s tallest animals didn’t seem to have any trouble with that diet, but Kearney wondered if they might be even healthier if offered something more like the food they eat in the wild.



Figuring out the contents of a wild giraffe’s diet wasn’t easy. Giraffes are natural browsers, eating leaves off nearly 100 different kinds of trees. To find out what the animals eat in a day of browsing the savannah, Kearney consulted nutritionists at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, who had done research on other African browsing animals.

Using that information, Kearney and Hall came up with a feed that has a different blend of carbohydrates than are found in traditional hay-and-grain feed, including more sugars.

In February 2002, workers at the Tampa attraction began offering the feed to some of their giraffes, and Kearney and Hall began studying the results. Their research may be a first: While zookeepers have occasionally experimented with new food items for giraffes, Kearney and Hall say they know of no statistically viable feeding studies done previously. With only a small number of giraffes under human care, the researchers said, it’s rare to find a population large enough to support a study.

Kearney and Hall believe the giraffes on the new feed are healthier, based on data they’ve collected from blood tests. It’s a little tougher to show that the giraffes actually prefer the new food to their earlier diet. That requires a grasp of giraffe body language.

“Ears can be a pretty good indicator of how a giraffe is feeling,” Kearney said. “If a giraffe is upset, for instance, the ears go forward and the eyebrows go up.”



So far, their keepers said, the feed hasn’t caused any raised eyebrows among the giraffes.

“They like it, that’s for sure,” said Brian Hart, who works with the giraffes at the park. “There are occasions when we’ve offered them both diets, and I’ve seen quite a few of them pass up on the old diet in favor of the new one.”



The feed has generated interest from veterinarians and zookeepers, who may try it on other browsing animals, such as the black rhinos also on display at the Tampa park. In a joint effort with the park, Kearney and Hall are also talking to a company about turning the giraffe feed into a commercial product for zoos.

Kearney plans to keep looking for better foods for other zoo animals after she completes her doctorate at UF.

“Nutrition is a field with lots of potential,” she said. “There’s such a wide variety of animals, and we have so much to learn.”