Everyday Canvas

Baby Giraffe

Prompt: A beautiful baby giraffe was born at a zoo in Tennessee. What's the big deal? She has no spots! She is all brown. Write about this in your Blog entry today.

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She's a cute marvel, isn't she! Together with the rest of us, she left the zookeepers and the vets astounded, I bet.

This giraffe's coat pattern came about probably because of the multiple genes interacting in new and complex ways. Then, this might be caused by environmental factors and the interactions of her mama with an animal from another species as it does take place quite often in the animal kingdom. Yes, go blame the mama, again!

This sort of thing probably doesn't happen as often; yet, the workings of the DNA sometimes throws us a curveball with a genetic surprise. In general, nature has designed giraffes' and other animals' coat patterns as camouflage in their natural habitats. It just may be that, if you change the habitat, you change the camouflage.

This could be because, given a certain unchanging habitat, DNA has expertise in replication, but change something a bit different and DNA adapts to it and changes with it, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. Why, we don't know, yet. Although we've come a long way in understanding DNA's tricks, there is still much to learn. Luckily for the baby giraffe, this change may have affected only her coat pattern.

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