From Steve Gettle

"How Crazy is This?" - Giraffe Weevil - Andasibe, Madagascar

Madagascar is filled with unique and interesting things found no where else on earth. This tiny insect is a giraffe weevil it is about 1.5 inches (4 CM) This one is a male, whose neck is roughly three times longer than a female's. During mating season the males will joust with their necks (much like a giraffe) trying to dislodge their rivals from the vegetation.

Good Luck and Good Light! Steve and Nicole

Image: Giraffe Weevil - Andasibe, Madagascar Nikon Z9, Nikkor 105mm Macro, 1/200th @ f16, ISO 200, Nikon R1 - C1 Macro flash, Image cropped 5% for final composition

Imagine a giraffe with a right angle in its neck.

When one has an external skeleton, the design language is going to be a bit different.

I think it's wilder that we have the same number of neck vertebrae as actual giraffes!

Meanwhile, my owl friends have 14, in a helix formation no less.

Its easier to alter the existing body plan than adding an extra vetrebrae. AFAIK all mammals have the same amount of those.

Manatees (6) and sloths (5-10) are the exceptions.

It's very interesting that it is only cervical vertebrae that remain nearly universally consistent. Lumbar and thoracic numbers vary quite wildly.

I found this really interesting paper hypothesizing that a combo of low metabolism and low activity can lead to a loosening of evolutionary constraint on that number, based on the sloths and manatees being the outliers. Their study also shows bushbabies being the only primate where around 30% of the 80ish specimens studied had a thoracic vertebra that had not fully developed a rib, making it much more like a cervical vertebra. They were said to be the least active and metabolically demanding of the primates, further supporting their hypothesis.

So giraffes I can get the evolutionary benefit of being taller to reach higher food, but what is the benefit here? Seems like just extra difficulty in creating and maintaining a long thin structure without much gain. Sometimes evolution makes something and it sticks for no real gain I suppose.

All we seem to know is they use them for fighting and courtship displays. The males have necks 2-3x longer than the females, so it doesn't seem to be something for getting food or anything.

I don't know why but something about this lil guy is so whimsical. His head is just so far from his body. It's adorable

I guess longer necks just look sexy to them

Madagascar has such strange, one-off animals, it's hard not to love them for their uniqueness if nothing else.