Not one species, but actually four...

Three decades ago, Giraffe population was around 150,000 across Africa. Today, their numbers have declined down to 1,00,000 as their habitat has been turned over to agriculture. In spite of the steady decline, Giraffe were not included in the red list of endangered species. The reason was, as a single species, Giraffe's one lakh population strength was not too low to be considered as endangered species. However, a recent DNA analysis of all currently existing nine sub-species, revealed that that there is not just one species of giraffe, but they actually belong to four distinct species. Experts say that the differences are as large as those between brown bears and polar bears. In this case, the individual population count under the four categories will get reduced and giraffe are likely to be labelled endangered species.