The Giraffe's Long Neck: From Evolutionary Fable to Whole Organism

This book provides a comprehensive picture of the giraffe's biology and ecology as well as the complex and and controversial issue of its evolution. Through oversimplified evolutionary theory the giraffe has been reduced, in effect, to a long neck that exemplifies how evolution is supposed to work (Darwin) and not supposed to work (Lamarck). It has become a caricature. To resurrect the giraffe to the status of the wonderful creature it is, Holdrege presents unique perspectives on the giraffe as a whole organism. Neither card-carrying Darwinists nor Creationists will be happy with this book, since its intention is to break through the strictures of narrowly confined conceptions of the giraffe and of evolution.