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Growth of ungulates
Gašparová, Kateřina ; Brandlová, Karolína (advisor) ; Barbora, Barbora (referee)
The bachelor thesis deals with the growth of giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis). From the data obtained from scientific publications, I examined whether there are differences in size between wild and captive giraffes. I also evaluated the size differences between subspecies and I examined whether the data in encyclopedias correspond to
the information published in scientific journals. For lack of data about the height I assessed only weight.
I put data from scientific publications into spreadsheet and I further analyzed this obtained data. Due to sexual dimorphism, the results were analyzed separately for males and females.
For both sexes, individuals living in the wild are significantly heavier than individuals living in captive. Smaller body weight of captive individuals may be due
to unnatural diet and climate. So it is with birth weight of calves, in the wild, calves are born heavier.
In case of weight differences among subspecies, there are significant differences among females. The results may be connected with clinal changes known from other mammals or they may be influenced by non-balanced number of individual data within the subspecies.
We can say that the information in encyclopedias do not correspond with scientific articles, at least in terms of weight. In encyclopedias there are probably the record values, not the average one.
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