scombrid

Can I get a <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

I was watching Hovind on TBN last week. He had this giraffe thing, ICA stones, dinosaur petrogliphs, and man-tracks in dino tracks all in the same lecture.

Here's another <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> for good measure

Stephen T-B

Thank goodness for British wild-life tv programmes, I say.
This giraffe question was addressed by one of them not long ago, and anyone who was awake will remember something about valves preventing the animal's head popping.
Our wild-life programmes invariably proclaim the principle of evolution, and it really got up my dear dead mother's nose. She was a follower of the Charismatic / Evangelical strain, and Fundamentalist in her beliefs. She also liked wild-life programmes, but had this terrible difficulty because while she enjoyed the pictures, she couldn't stand the commentary, which constantly caused her to take sharp intakes of breath.

Bubba

Odd that someone would use a giraffe as an arguement against evolution. One would seem to have an excellent arguement for evolution based upon the fact that they are so simular to horses and zebras and stuff.

Of course, you could say the same thing about primates and humans.

Oddly enough, the giraffe was my first introduction to the idea of evolution. When my second grade teacher mentioned "evolution" I went home and asked my mother about it. She used the example of the giraffe and explained how evolution was natures way of adapting species. Even as a seven year old the idea made perfect sense.

Bubba

One of the last sane

Er...how? Giraffes are artiodactyla, even-toed. Horses and zebras are perissodactyla, odd-toed. It's a major evolutionary gulf.

Bubba

So I'm going to stand corrected. What are the nearest evolutionary relatives of the giraffe?

Bubba

Dan828

Bubba, I believe that Giraffe are related to deer.

One of the last sane

Giraffes are ruminantia, that is cud-chewers, like deer, cattle, goats, sheep, antelopes etc. The nearest relative to the giraffe is the okapi. Lest you doubt my word, or, alternatively, think I am unusually well-informed, I just found out that the okapi is the nearest relative by opening another browser and visiting <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/" target="_blank"> the NCBI Taxonomy site</a>.

There are two sorts of knowledge...one is to know a thing, the other is to know where to look it up.

One of the last sane

Incidentally, how is having to regurgitate food all the way up that long neck in order to chew the cud, Intelligent Design? If God was so smart, he would have made the giraffe a monogastric animal like a horse, rather than a ruminant.

Lizard

I think the most rational answer to this guy's argument against evolution is, "Have you ever observed a giraffe's head explode due to excess blood pressure? No? Well, neither has anybody else. So what IS your point?"

Atheist121

Look out, it's gonna blow!!!