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Originally posted by moocowman
reply to post by Cairowoman
There's another 2 minutes of my life I'll never get back
...Lorenzo the Magnificent’s rise to power. He was not satisfied by his family’s empire (they were bankers and merchants who traded throughout Europe);...
Caesar had triumphantly brought back a giraffe from Egypt, which he paraded through Rome along with lions, leopards, panthers and other creatures. His ability to procure a giraffe, which the Romans had never seen or even knew existed, was “a great coup,” she writes. “So why shouldn’t Lorenzo emulate Caesar?...
“And so a live giraffe, not seen in Europe since antiquity, would lift Lorenzo’s prestige above that of all his contemporaries, who may have had other exotic mammals, but certainly none as extraordinary.” ”
Calves (baby giraffes) bleat and make a mewing call.
Cows (female giraffes) seeking lost calves bellow.
Courting bulls (male giraffes) sometimes let out a loud cough!
Also, giraffes have been heard snorting, moaning, snoring, hissing, and making strange flutelike sounds!
The ancient Romans called this animal "Camelopardalis" which meant "A camel marked like a leopard"
The Giraffe. The name means "camel-leopard."
Camelopardalis is a modern constellation created to fill a vast region of faint stars surrounded by the brighter and more famous constellations of Ursa Major, Auriga, Perseus, Cassiopeia, and others. The constellation was probably invented by Petrus Plancius (1552-1622), a Dutchman who made his name in cartography while working for the Dutch East India Company. His world maps of 1592 and 1594 became very popular, while his contribution to the heavenly maps was awarded in 1624 when Camelopardalis was included in Jakob Bartsch's book on the constellations. (Some historians believe Bartsch had invented the constellation.) The "camel-leopard" was so named because the Greeks thought the animal -- a giraffe -- had the head of a camel and the spots of a leopard
."