First Insights into the Fecal Metabolome of Healthy, Free-Roaming Giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis): An Untargeted GCxGC/TOF-MS Metabolomics Study

Giraffes receiving extra feed left a different chemical mixture behind. Their droppings contained amino acids and other small compounds whose abundances differed from those of giraffes browsing vegetation alone. Those traces offered a way to study a complex process involving food, the animal's body and the microbes that help digest a leafy diet.

Andri Grobbelaar, Gernot Osthoff, Ilse du Preez and Francois Deacon analysed 26 selected samples from 13 free-roaming giraffes at six South African locations. Collected during 2021–2023, the samples were examined with instruments that separate and identify many small compounds at once. The team compared feeding groups, sexes, and repeated samples from one male across wet and dry seasons, rather than testing only for a predetermined nutrient.

Several amino-acid-related compounds were more abundant in dung from supplemented giraffes, and chemical profiles also differed between males and females. Seasonal patterns in the repeatedly sampled male were exploratory, without statistically clear differences in individual compounds. The small, unbalanced study cannot separate feed effects from differences among sites and animals, or turn a chemical pattern into a health diagnosis. Its contribution is a starting map of what giraffe dung can reveal without capture: not simply undigested food, but a mixture of dietary and digestive information.