Elephant Puppet sees the giraffe eating
2giraffe eats around 34 kg (75 lb) of plant matter daily.[43] When stressed, giraffes may chew on large branches, stripping them of bark.[33]: 325 Giraffes are also recorded to chew old bones.[51]: 102
During the wet season, food is abundant and giraffes are more spread out, while during the dry season, they gather around the remaining evergreen trees and bushes.[89] Mothers tend to feed in open areas, presumably to make it easier to detect predators, although this may reduce their feeding efficiency.[68] As a ruminant, the giraffe first chews its food, then swallows it for processing and then visibly passes the half-digested cud up the neck and back into the mouth to chew again.[49]: 78–79 The giraffe requires less food than many other herbivores because the foliage it eats has more concentrated nutrients and it has a more efficient digestive system.[89] The animal's faeces come in the form of small pellets.[17]
Giraffes have a great effect on the trees that they feed on, delaying the growth of young trees for some years and giving "waistlines" to particularly tall trees. Feeding is at its highest during the first and last hours of daytime. Between these hours, giraffes mostly stand and ruminate. Rumination is the dominant activity during the night, when it is mostly done lying down.[43]
They start chewing the food for a few moments and then swallow it. Next, they regurgitate that food into their mouths to chew it a second time. They may do this process before they move on to consume another food; this is a lengthy process which takes giraffes a lot of time feeding each day.
Giraffes primarily eat the leaves and twigs of acacia, mimosa, and wild apricot trees. Typically, a giraffe will eat about 66 pounds of food a day but can survive on as little as 33 pounds.
Giraffe are the tallest herbivores in the world and feed of a variety of plant species. They are not carnivorous! However, when nutrients are lacking in their normal daily diets, and they become nutritionally stressed, they will eat bone to get phosphorous and calcium their bodies require.