Most mammals sleep for hours every day. Giraffes barely sleep at all. They get by on tiny naps that add up to roughly thirty minutes in a 24-hour day, usually broken into 3-to-5-minute snoozes while they’re standing up. Lying down out in the open would be too dangerous around lions.
Their long necks make almost everything weird about their bodies. To pump blood up to their head, giraffes have one of the strongest hearts on the planet, and blood pressure roughly twice as high as a human’s. When they bend down to drink, special valves in the neck keep all that pressure from rushing into their brain.
Their tongues are wild too - about 18 to 20 inches long, prehensile (meaning they can grip like a hand), and a strange bluish-purple color. The unusual color is thought to protect against sunburn, since the tongue spends so much time sticking out into the sun.
