Day 7
Professor Abraham
I woke up as early as possible in the morning feeling all refreshed.
It has been long since I last slept so peacefully.
I looked down to her side to see that she is still sleeping.
I got worried that she has been sleeping for way too long.
Getting up quickly from the bed, I put on my shirt and head out to the doctor's tent.
"Good morning Prof, is there any problem?" she asks as soon as I entered
"She still hasn't woken up" I answer.
She stays silent for a bit.
"Let me go check up on her" she says and picks up her bag.
She starts checking all her vitals and then looks up at me.
"Everything seems to be fine, thank goodness and I'm hoping she would be up and much stronger by the evening" she says.
I let out a sigh of relief that I didn't even know I was holding till now.
"She is really a fighter, some would have even took longer to start responding to the medication" she says.
"I'll get going then" she says.
"Thanks very much" I thank her.
"I'm just doing my job Prof" she says.
I was so relieved to hear that. Soon, she's be able to get back on her feet again.
I walked into the bathroom and took my bath and as I walked out, I saw that her friend has already arrived.
"Good morning Sir, how's she feeling now?" she asks.
"She's feeling much better, and thanks very much for your help yesterday" I say.
"No need to thank me Sir, I'm just helping out a friend" she says.
"Hope you won't mind if I stay back today as well?" she asks.
"No, not at all" I say.
"I'll get going then" I add and walk out of the room.
I am sure that she will definitely take care of her, I do trust her with that.
After calling out the roll names, we all head out into the jungle and lucky for us, we spotted some giraffes.
"Good morning all once again, I'm sure most of you know what this pretty tall animal is" I say and they all shout yes.
"So, we'll be talking about it today, I'll get starting now" I say.
"The giraffe is a tall African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus Giraffa and it is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant- hoofed herbivorous- on Earth" I begin. 
"Traditionally, giraffes were thought to be one species, Giraffa camelopardalis, with nine subspecies but most recently, researchers proposed dividing them into up to eight extant species due to new research into their mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, as well as morphological measurements and seven other extinct species of Giraffa are known from the fossil record" I say.
"The giraffe's chief distinguishing characteristics are its extremely long neck and legs, its horn-like ossicones, and its spotted coat patterns and it is classified under the family Giraffidae, along with its closest extant relative, the okapi" I say. 
"Its scattered range extends from Chad in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Niger in the west to Somalia in the east" I say. 
"Giraffes usually inhabit savannahs and woodlands and their food source is leaves, fruits, and flowers of woody plants, primarily acacia species, which they browse at heights most other herbivores cannot reach" I continue.
"Lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, and African wild dogs may prey upon giraffes" I add. 
"Giraffes live in herds of related females and their offspring, or bachelor herds of unrelated adult males, but are gregarious and may gather in large aggregations, males establish social hierarchies through 'necking', combat bouts where the neck is used as a weapon and dominant males gain mating access to females, which bear sole responsibility for raising the young" I say.
"The giraffe has intrigued various ancient and modern cultures for its peculiar appearance, and has often been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons and I'm sure you must have seen some for yourself as well, right?" I ask. 
Most nodded in affirmation.
"Ok, so It is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, as vulnerable to extinction and has been extirpated from many parts of its former range but giraffes are still found in numerous national parks and game reserves, but estimates as of 2016 indicate there are approximately 97,500 members of Giraffa in the wild and more than 1,600 were kept in zoos in 2010" I continue.
"The name giraffe has its earliest known origins in the Arabic word zarāfah, perhaps borrowed from the animal's Somali name geri" I say. 
"The Arab name is translated as "fast-walker" I add.
"In early Modern English the spellings jarraf and ziraph were used, probably directly from the Arabic, and in Middle English orafle and gyrfaunt, gerfaunt, the Italian form giraffa arose in the 1590sand the modern English form developed around 1600 from the French girafe" I continue.
"Camelopard is an archaic English name for the giraffe; it derives from the Ancient Greek kamēlopárdalis, from kámēlos meaning camel, and párdalis meaning leopard referring to its camel-like shape and leopard-like colouration" I say.
"Carl Linnaeus originally classified living giraffes as one species in 1758 and he gave it the binomial name Cervus camelopardalis, Morten Thrane Brünnich classified the genus Giraffa in 1762 and the species name camelopardalis is from Latin" I add.
"The giraffe is one of only two living genera of the family Giraffidae in the order Artiodactyla, the other being the okapi and the family was once much more extensive, with over 10 fossil genera described" I say. 
"The elongation of the neck appears to have started early in the giraffe lineage, and comparisons between giraffes and their ancient relatives suggest vertebrae close to the skull lengthened earlier, followed by lengthening of vertebrae further down" I say. 
"One early giraffid ancestor was Canthumeryx which has been dated variously to have lived 25–20 million years ago, 17–15 mya or 18–14.3 mya and whose deposits have been found in Libya" I say. 
"This animal resembled an antelope and had a medium-sized, lightly-built body" I add. 
"Giraffokeryx appeared 15–12 mya on the Indian subcontinent and resembled an okapi or a small giraffe, and had a longer neck and similar ossicones, and Giraffokeryx may have shared a clade with more massively built giraffids like Sivatherium and Bramatherium" I add.
"Giraffids like Palaeotragus, Shansitherium and Samotherium appeared 14 mya and lived throughout Africa and Eurasia and these animals had broader skull with reduced frontal cavities" I say.
"Paleotragus resembled the okapi and may have been its ancestor while others found that the okapi lineage diverged earlier, before Giraffokeryx, Samotherium was a particularly important transitional fossil in the giraffe lineage, as the length and structure of its cervical vertebrae were between those of a modern giraffe and an okapi, and its neck posture was likely similar to the former" I say. 
"Bohlinia, which first appeared in southeastern Europe and lived 9–7 mya, was likely a direct ancestor of the giraffe as Bohlinia closely resembled modern giraffes, having a long neck and legs and similar ossicones and dentition" I add.
"Bohlinia colonised China and northern India and produced the Giraffa which, around 7 mya, reached Africa" I add. 
"Climate changes led to the extinction of the Asian giraffes, while the African giraffes survived and radiated into new species" I say. 
"Living giraffes appear to have arisen around 1 mya in eastern Africa during the Pleistocene while some biologists suggest the modern giraffes descended from G. jumae, others find G. gracilis a more likely candidate. G. jumae was larger and more robust, while G. gracilis was smaller and more slender" I say.
"The changes from extensive forests to more open habitats, which began 8 mya, are believed to be the main driver for the evolution of giraffes and during this time, tropical plants disappeared and were replaced by arid C4 plants, and a dry savannah emerged across eastern and northern Africa and western India, some researchers have hypothesised that this new habitat coupled with a different diet, including acacia species, may have exposed giraffe ancestors to toxins that caused higher mutation rates and a higher rate of evolution" I say.
"The coat patterns of modern giraffes may also have coincided with these habitat changes and Asian giraffes are hypothesised to have had more okapi-like colourations" I add.
"The giraffe genome is around 2.9 billion base pairs in length compared to the 3.3 billion base pairs of the okapi and of the proteins in giraffe and okapi genes, 19.4% are identical, so, the divergence of giraffe and okapi lineages dates to around 11.5 mya" I say. 
"A small group of regulatory genes in the giraffe appear to be responsible for the animal's stature and associated circulatory adaptations" I say.
"The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently recognises only one species of giraffe with nine subspecies and during the 1900s, various taxonomies with two or three species were proposed" 
"A 2007 study on the genetics of giraffes using mitochondrial DNA suggested at least six lineages could be recognised as species while a 2011 study using detailed analyses of the morphology of giraffes, and application of the phylogenetic species concept, described eight species of living giraffes" I say. 
"A 2016 study also concluded that living giraffes consist of multiple species and the researchers suggested the existence of four species, which have not exchanged genetic information between each other for 1 to 2 million years" I say.
"A 2020 study showed that depending on the method chosen, different taxonomic hypotheses recognizing from two to six species can be considered for the genus Giraffa and that study also found that multi-species coalescent methods can lead to taxonomic over-splitting, as those methods delimit geographic structures rather than species" I say. 
"The three-species hypothesis, which recognises G. camelopardalis, G. giraffa, and G. tippelskirchi, is highly supported by phylogenetic analyses and also corroborated by most population genetic and multi-species coalescent analyses" I add.
"A 2021 whole genome sequencing study suggests the existence of four distinct species and seven subspecies" I add.
"The first extinct species to be described was Giraffa sivalensis Falconer and Cautley 1843, a reevaluation of a vertebra that was initially described as a fossil of the living giraffe while taxonomic opinion may be lacking on some names, the extinct species that have been published include, Giraffa gracilis, Giraffa jumae, Giraffa priscilla, Giraffa pomeli, Giraffa punjabiensis, Giraffa pygmaea, Giraffa sivalensis, Giraffa stillei" I say.
"Fully grown giraffes stand 4.3 to 5.7 m tall, with males taller than females and the average weight is 1,192 kg for an adult male and 828 kg for an adult female" I say. 
"Despite its long neck and legs, its body is relatively short and the skin is mostly gray, tan, and can reach a thickness of 20 mm" I say. 
"The 80 to 100 centimetres long tail ends in a long, dark tuft of hair and is used as a defense against insects" I added.