First Insights into the Urinary Metabolome of Captive Giraffes by Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

A giraffe leaves dozens of chemical clues when it urinates. Some come from processing food and producing energy; others involve the microbes living in its gut. Reading that mixture could offer a view inside the animal without catching it, but researchers first needed to establish which molecules were present.

Chenglin Zhu, Sabrina Fasoli, Gloria Isani and Luca Laghi analysed urine from 35 apparently healthy giraffes at five Italian zoos. Most samples were collected immediately from the ground. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy identified and measured small molecules, allowing comparisons between age groups and between adult males and non-pregnant females. Two females also provided samples during and after pregnancy.

The team quantified 39 molecules. Six differed between the adult male and female groups, and three varied with age. The two pregnancy comparisons showed further shared changes, but were far too few to establish a pregnancy test. Nor did these healthy-animal comparisons establish markers of disease. Even the effect of collecting urine from the ground was checked in only one paired sample. The useful discovery is a measurable chemical profile whose normal variation matters: age and sex must be understood before a changed urine pattern can confidently be attributed to illness.