Rothschild's giraffe in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

© Theo Allofs/Minden Picture

The tallest animal on the longest day. The tallest animal in the world on the longest day of the year

Happy summer! Today marks the first full day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Today also happens to be World Giraffe Day, so we’ve picked this giraffe dining out on tree leaves in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya, to honour both occasions.

There are just over 100,000 giraffes worldwide and although they're not considered endangered, populations are falling in some of their native habitats across the savannahs and grasslands of Africa. The long-necked star of our homepage today is a Rothschild’s giraffe, a subspecies of the Northern giraffe, and one that’s classified as ‘near threatened’. There were only 1,669 of these giraffes in the wild as of 2016, 45 of them here in Lake Nakuru National Park. Others can be found in Murchison Falls National Park in northern Uganda. Within these parks, the giraffes are fenced off to keep poachers from sneaking in. Their natural predators - the hyena, lion, crocodile and leopard - remain a threat. But at least they're a natural threat.