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Giraffes use Birds as an Alarm System

Acoustic researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) have shown through field studies in South Africa that giraffes can learn to correctly interpret the alarm calls of other animals.

 06.11.2025
Neck of a giraffe with red-billed obpecker resting on it.
© ÖAW/Anton Baotic

Giraffes live on a continent where danger is ever-present. Two new studies by Anton Baotic from the Acoustics Research Institute of the OeAW and independent researcher Georgine Szipl have now discovered how these animals detect threats. In South Africa, the researchers investigated how giraffes respond to predator sounds and to the alarm calls of other species — and showed that their vigilance is based not only on innate instinct but also on learned experience. A particularly unusual partner plays a key role in this: the red-billed oxpecker, a bird species common across South Africa.

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Anton Baotic

Publications

Anton Baotic, Georgine Szipl, Predator experience enhances giraffe vigilance to oxpecker alarm calls. BMC Biology volume 23 (2025).
DOI: 10.1186/s12915-025-02395-5

Anton Baotic, Georgine Szipl, Learning to fear: predator recognition in giraffes is shaped by evolved sensitivity and ecological experience. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 13:1634218 (2025).
DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1634218