Now picture this… You are a giraffe peacefully grazing on the Serengeti. When all of a sudden, a lion pops out from bush! What do you do?! What I tell you?! Do you really believe that you can react quick enough, and send a nervous signal throughout an approximately 5 meter long body to save your life?

There are two problems to this equation of quick reflexes : 1) the time required to respond to a stimulus (known as responsiveness), and 2) the precision of stimulus detection and response to it (known as resolution) (More et al., 2013). As body size increases there is decrease in resolution, resulting in a greater sensorimotor delay between stimulus detection and response. This is a result of the giraffe exhibiting longer axons rather than an increased number of axons (Badlangana et al., 2007). Due to the processes of signal transfer (which I can save for a chat on another day), a longer axon results in a slower signal transfer compared to multiple shorter axons. Additionally, there is lower innervation density, meaning that there are fewer nerves per unit of area compared to smaller animals, which also results in a slower response. However, even with these challenges a giraffe is still capable of responding to a predator in a timely manner (such as a lion or hunter). It just may appear a little slower than their predatory counterparts.