Moving a giraffe is a tall order. When populations grow too large for the available habitat, or farmers want the animals off their lands, African governments and landowners increasingly seek to move the animals to other, more hospitable, lands. But rounding up and moving a giraffe takes an extraordinary level of skill, planning, and teamwork, as Tall Blondes shows.

Leading these “translocation” efforts are a special, new breed of giraffe wrangler. These men and women — often wildlife biologists or veterinarians — are used to working with wild animals, and are trained in using everything from helicopters and dart guns to special high-rise trucks and sky-scraping movable walls, to corral the stately animals.

While not all roundups follow the same script, one shown on Tall Blondes is typical. The wranglers use small helicopters to spot and then drive the giraffes toward a special, funnel-shaped walled pen made from enormous tarps. As the giraffes travel down the high-walled funnel, the wranglers block the passage behind them by pulling tarps across — much as you might close doors behind you as you walk down a long hallway. Eventually, the giraffes enter a narrow passageway leading to a waiting truck — specially constructed to hold the ultra-tall cargo.

Such tight quarters can be dangerous, since a sharp kick from a large giraffe could easily land a wrangler in the hospital — or even a grave. That’s why some wranglers use special medicated darts to temporarily tranquilize a giraffe if it has to be captured in an area where building a trap might not be possible.

One of this new breed of giraffe wranglers is Petronel Nieuwoudt, Director of Deepgreen Safaris and The Game Capture School, a South African firm that relocates wildlife and sometimes takes paying clients along for the adventure. Nieuwoudt recently answered a few questions for NATURE, just before setting out on an expedition aimed at moving several giraffes.

NATURE: How did you get involved in giraffe translocations?

Petronel Nieuwoudt: I was an officer in the Endangered Species Protection Unit of the South African Police Service, and I decided to start my own company at the end of 1999. The giraffe is absolutely my favorite animal. I was totally hooked after my first experience, capturing a giraffe in the desert. Giraffes are much more than an animal. They show emotion, and once you touch or handle these animals, you fall in love with them. On two ocassions I’ve seen giraffes cry — that was devestating. I am glad we could help them.

NATURE: How many giraffes do you round up in a typical year — and who asks you to move them?

PN: We move more or less 60 animals a year. Normally, it is game farmers who want to buy or sell excess giraffe. [Editor's note: Game farmers raise wild species for tourism, zoos, and recovery efforts.]

NATURE: How much does it cost?

PN: It costs from $400 to $650 dollars — but that doesn’t include the cost of buying the animal.

NATURE: You leave in a few days for a translocation roundup. What’s happening?

PN: We are going to move two giraffe cows. One farmer bought them from another, and we will take care of the capture, transport, and release.

NATURE: Which are easier to roundup — males or females?

PN: It is not really a question of males or females. Generally, smaller, younger animals are easier to handle, transport, and move. The big males and females are really difficult. We will think twice before trying to move a big, dark giraffe male. They are extremely strong animals. You can never underestimate them.

NATURE: Do things ever go wrong?

PN: Sometimes things do go wrong. We are working with wild animals — not trained zoo animals. The vet once darted an animal through the tail and we had to dart it again. Sometimes the animals are not in good [health] and you have to take extra care. Sometimes they lie down in the truck and you have to get them to stand or let them go. I could go on for hours. But if you work with an experienced veterinarian and game capture team you minimize the risks.

NATURE: What do people think of your work?

PN: They think I have the most wonderful work in the whole world. And for me? Every day I am working with these magnificent creatures. I feel like I am doing my bit to save the world. I wish everyone could see and experience the compassion that everyone I work with shows toward these animals.

For centuries, biologists believed giraffes were the mute giants of Africa’s plains and forests — silent sentinels gazing to the horizon. In recent years, however, new techniques and technologies have allowed scientists to listen more carefully — and realize that giraffes may be talking after all. Just not in a way that we can hear.

Over the last few decades, biologists using special microphones, recording equipment, and computer analysis programs have realized that whales, elephants, and some other animals were using extremely low-frequency sounds — far below the range of human ears — to communicate.

These low-pitched sounds are known as “infrasound,” and they have at least one remarkable property: they can travel farther than higher-pitched noises through the air and earth. Such long-distance communication is a must for animals, such as giraffes or elephants, that can be spread over vast territories. Elephants, for instance, may be able to communicate with other animals up to several miles away.

Studying infrasound, however, is difficult. In part, that’s because so many things produce infrasound, from rumbling earthquakes and thunder storms to trains and cars. Sorting out wild sounds from the background noise can be nearly impossible. But by doing studies in zoos, where researchers can partly control experiments, scientists have been able to document the existence of infrasound and show that animals appear to be using it to communicate.

TALL BLONDES documents the work of one of these sound scientists. In 1998, Elizabeth von Muggenthaler of the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina and a group of colleagues announced that they had found evidence that giraffes use infrasound to communicate. In part, Muggenthaler had taken on the study — done on 11 giraffes at 2 zoos in North and South Carolina — because she had studied the use of infrasound by the Okapi, a relative of the giraffe. It would be natural, she thought, for the giraffe, which shares many behaviors with the Okapi, to also share the use of low sounds.

In their zoo study, the researchers noticed that the low sounds picked up by their microphones seemed to coincide with two behaviors: the “neck stretch,” where giraffes throw their head and necks back over their bodies; and the “head throw,” in which the animals lower and then quickly raise their chins. How exactly giraffes make the low, huffing noises is unclear, however. The researchers think the answer lies in studying how air moves through the giraffe’s long neck.

In a recent interview, Muggenthaler discussed her work trying to listen to the unhearable:

NATURE: Sounds like you’ve got a tough job.

Elizabeth von Muggenthaler: It is a such a hard thing to do. You can’t hear infrasound, so you are relying totally on your microphones and computerized analysis systems to detect it. Then, there are so many other things that create infrasound — from water and wind to cars and trains — that you have to be able to eliminate what you don’t want. The environment has to be very good where you are recording. It’s hard to do in the field.

NATURE: What tipped you off that giraffes might be using infrasound?

EVM: Well, here is an animal that is very social, they hide in forests [making visual communication difficult], and they hide their young during the day while foraging. They are hunted by other animals. But they were considered mute. Right there is your clue — there are no animals [that have such behaviors] that are mute. They wouldn’t survive if they couldn’t communicate.

Also, if you look at giraffes’ ears, you know something is going on. Their ears are like parabolas and they have [features] that suggest they can tune in on sounds.

NATURE: What would it take to study the giraffe’s use of infrasound in the wild?

EVM: Well, you would really need an array of microphones, so you’d be able to detect if it’s the giraffe or not. It would be a very expensive study.

NATURE: How did you get interested in infrasound?

EVM: It’s just that we humans are so limited. I knew I wanted to study animal communication [in college] and I liked the elephant [infrasound] studies [that other scientists had done]. So I tried to replicate that and ended up at NASA, renting equipment. It was while I was recording the elephants that I got the rhinos. [Editor's note: In 1992, Muggenthaler documented the use of infrasound by rhinos.] It’s just that there is this world of crazy stuff going on with sound. There is this unseen world out there, and I want people to know it exists.

Travel around the world and learn more about a one-of-a-kind animal, as Lynn Sherr presents a beguiling portrait of giraffes.

Lynn Sherr, the award-winning correspondent for ABC TV’s 20/20 newsmagazine, went to Africa for the first time in 1973 and fell in love — with giraffes. “They were a dazzling, unexpected revelation: gawky, graceful anomalies; cool, gentle giants dressed in golden, stained-glass coats. And when they ran, they seemed to float. I was hooked.” Journey to Kenya and South Africa, and to an American zoo that is the giraffe breeding capital of the Western Hemisphere, for a revealing look at this powerful, captivating creature when Ms. Sherr hosts Tall Blondes.

Ms. Sherr, a statuesque woman with fair hair and skin, says her friends were puzzled by her choice of favorite African mammal. But, one, nodding wisely, exclaimed, “Of course. Tall blondes.” Her friend’s comment inspired the title of her book, Tall Blondes, upon which the documentary is loosely based. Ms. Sherr re-visits Giraffe Manor, outside Nairobi, Kenya, a refuge whose inhabitants include a giraffe called Lynn, in her honor. At the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, viewers witness the birth of a giraffe, which enters the world six feet above ground. The film’s most exciting sequence involves trapping giraffes and relocating them to an African wildlife refuge. As Ms. Sherr notes, giraffes are not on any lists of endangered animals, but their habitats are shrinking as a result of human encroachment. The program helps debunk the notion that giraffes are silent by highlighting research indicating that they communicate through infrasound, not audible to the human ear.

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Online content for Tall Blondes was originally posted October 2002.