After a video of deer eating snake, a video of giraffe eating bones emerges

Giraffes are herbivores & use their long necks to reach the leaves & buds in the tree top. They have evolved that way.

But sometimes chew & eat bones to get phosphorus. Nature is amazing. https://t.co/Llw6bHRj9I pic.twitter.com/VkICSn1lin

— Susanta Nanda (@susantananda3) June 12, 2023

In September 2010, science journalist and wildlife enthusiast Jackson Landers shared a video on YouTube that showed a young deer accepting meat right out of his hands when Landers was cooking steak at a campsite. In a following article in Slate about herbivores eating meat, Landers wrote, “Even animals from this highly plant-specialised group will eat meat when given the chance.” He attributed this seemingly odd consumption behaviour to the survival mechanism that many species are adopting due to “upheaval” caused by “habitats disappear, climates change, food sources shift, and old niches in ecosystems disappear as new ones emerge.”

In an article for National Geographic, journalist Sarah Gibbens explained the tendency of giraffes to feed on the bones of dead animals as a sign of osteophagia, a practice in which herbivores eat bones, horns, fallen antlers, and ivory to get nutrients like phosphorous and calcium that they don’t get from plants.