There comes a time in the bush when everything seems to stop. It is the moment when the animals stop, who can in the shade, who can sleep and who can ruminate, but all take advantage of the hottest hours of the day to rest and minimize activities.
We also stop then, after the game drive we retreat into the fields where after lunch we relax watching the slow flow of the river, or the hippopotamuses snoozing.
While we were heading towards the field for our lunch and our break, we suddenly noticed a movement near a small group of dum palms. "The giraffes, look over there, are doing a love dance!!!" exclaimed a guest, I stopped the car and in silence and with binoculars in my hand, while we were watching the two giraffes, I explained to my guests that it was actually something much more bloody and definitely less sweet than a love dance.
The two giraffes were like leaning against each other and seemed to swing gently and cross their necks in sinuous figures. Apparently it seemed like a very slow dance, a rocking ritual ... what you could not see but you could guess after a careful observation was that in reality the two giraffes were pushing themselves forcefully trying to unbalance the other, and the intertwining of the necks was just to avoid that the neck of the other could arch and move away to get strength and momentum for a shot.
One was older, you could understand it from the darker color of the body and the head lightened for the age and from the prominent fake horns, bony protuberances that develop males more and more markedly with age, until you have three or even four, on the forehead between the eyes, these fake horns serve the male as additional "weapons" in addition to the real horns (which also possess the females).
By arching the neck and turning the head against the side or neck of the opponent the giraffe can inflict powerful blows, but what seemed strange to our eyes was the extreme slowness with which all this happened.
The giraffe, so elegant, slow and compassed, seems not to want to lose its regal inalterability even when it fights...and what we were witnessing was therefore a real boxing match in slow motion.
And as it happens during boxing matches the two contenders leaned against each other, side by side, with the dual purpose of pushing the opponent and supporting each other while they were studying, lowering and raising together the long necks, intertwining them and at the first wrong move of the other inflicting a deaf and powerful blow, so slow that it seemed more ritual than real, but the strength of these blows was such that the one who received them was unbalanced on his legs.
The stakes of this clash were the females, there were three of them, a short distance from the contenders, who totally disinterested in the meeting between the two continued to pile the leaves on the Acacias Tortilis.
It is inevitable that such fights are often mistaken for "dances" or a form of courtship, and the image of the giraffe, so elegant, sinuous and with very long eyelashes, always and naively makes you think of a female figure, to the point that it is strange to think of a "giraffe".... And much less is it easy to imagine a bloody fight between two male giraffes. Knowing the animal world and above all having the opportunity to go on safari with guides, which can also explain behaviors not always decipherable, reveals a whole world that goes beyond the image that we normally have of certain animals, revealing the hidden and sometimes unimaginable sides of even the most known and familiar mammals.

(Camilla Frasca Caccia, owner of Bush Company, is an expert safari guide in Kenya, the only Italian safari guide with Silver KPSGA certification).