Learning to fear: predator recognition in giraffes is shaped by evolved sensitivity and ecological experience

Giraffes living with lions stayed alert ten times longer after hearing their roars. Both populations in a South African experiment noticed the sound, but the resemblance ended with that first response. Giraffes from a lion-free reserve soon returned to feeding, while those sharing their landscape with lions continued watching.

Anton Baotic and Georgine Szipl played recordings of lion roars and grunts, and harmless dove calls, to 51 adult southern giraffes in July–September 2024. Twenty-four lived where lions had been reintroduced about five years earlier; 27 lived in a reserve without lions. Each giraffe heard both sound types, with the order varied, while video captured how quickly it reacted and how long its vigilance lasted.

After lion calls, average vigilance lasted about eight and a half minutes in the lion-inhabited reserve, against less than a minute in the lion-free reserve. Responses to doves did not differ between sites. This supports a role for ecological experience in sustained attention, but comparing two reserves cannot prove individual learning or separate it completely from other site differences. Nor does a quick initial reaction establish an inherited fear of lions. The revealing distinction is between noticing a sound and continuing to treat it as a threat.