And is it half the volume, mass or a dimension? Because I've never tried neither blending or carrying a giraffe before (I never got invited to those parties in uni) so I have no grasp on volume or mass.
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Surely a giraffe is nearly uniform density making the distinction between volume and mass irrelevant
Even if it is not if you are just looking at the toal volume or mass it makes no difference when you halve it.
It kind of does if you half the volume. If you end up with the hypothetical gas filled half of a giraffe then it's less mass than if you end up with the meat filled half.
Unless you were only trying to convey volume to begin with then yes it doesn't make a difference.
Which part of the giraffe is filled with gas though?.
Are we talking about a cube that is drawn around the giraffe for it's volume or are we talking about the volume of the giraffe if you submerge it in wter and measure the displaced volume?
An astroid the mass of the meat half of a giraffe and the volume of 5kg of somewhat dry duck feathers...
I'm beginning to think that it would more relatable if it was just stated in kg or m^3 instead
Assume a spherical giraffe.
I don't get why Americans are doing their best to avoid the metric system. It's always weird discriptions. Like dishwashers, or in this case, half a giraffe. Just use bananas if (cubic) meters are too complex.
Isn't daily mail in the UK?
You mean wannabe US? (never truly accepted metric system, even discussed to change back to imperial)
Edit: fair point though. My bad.
As a USian, even we are baffled by measuring things in hands and stone.
Exactly. The only real unit is football fields.
People enjoy when things are compared in this way, it’s really not that shocking.
Other people (me) hate it.
Neat, thanks for letting us all know!
Why do people online caste Americans as the culprit when this is clearly from a British source?
Yeah sorry, based on assumption. Because the US (plus a few tiny islands) refuses to switch to metric even though imperial is obsolete and complicated. It's also usual practice in the US to use weird things for measurements. Cars, dishwashers, etc.
So in this case it was a wrong assumption on my part.
I'm deeply sorry.
It's more of a journalist thing. They take the words out of your mouth to reach their own conclusion fast and deliver an answer that'll fit inside the allocated screen time.
"When you heard that people use things instead of measurements to explain the size of other things, exactly how shocking was it to you?"
They describe these random things to avoid people talking about giraffes for hours.
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Also, most people dont even have a good grasp on how big giraffes are anyways!
I once went to a zoo that had an elevated platform extending into the giraffe's habitat so that you could stand face to face with them. Their heads are as big as a normal human, like 5 feet from crown to chin!
This is what Big Giraffe doesn't want you to know
Ah yes the Newfoundland garden giraffe, often times overlooked due to the Canadian House Hippo.
Bifurcated down between the eyes
americans be using anything but the metric system
I was thinking this must be metric because only Europeans with their noses firmly in the air would get it.
Its time to retire the metric system in favor of something base 12. Base 10 is for children who need to count on their fingers, base 12 is easier to divide into quarters or thirds. Babylon was right.
Daily Mail is British
But they're the sort of British that yearns for the good old days, when we still had shillings and inches and diphtheria and jumpers for goalposts and no womens' rights and all that great British stuff.
British people old enough to have supported the original nazis be using anything but the metric system
Should've used bananas for scale.
What's with the spherical comments in a vacuum?
One of the first things they will teach you in engineering design is to start by simplifying the model. So if you're trying to figure out something like the surface area is a fish you assume it's a cylinder then the math is easy. Same thing with assuming the object is in a vacuum. If you do that you ignore wind resistance and it makes the math easier. You can come back later and take the wind resistance into account.
Halved with a vertical cut.
It's not the scientists, it's a single journalist who is popping out these headlines. Some of those caught attention.
So like the size of a horse?
The average horse is about half the height and weight of the average giraffe. Giraffes are just a really bad unit of measurement, males weight about 400kg more than females and there is a wide height difference over their global population, they are technically four different species we just all call giraffe 🦒
I was just going to say, what kind of weird ass size comparison is that. It’s almost as egregious as saying “half the size of two apples”.
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I once saw a snake half the size of a garden hose.
In other words, a large boulder the size of a small boulder
Reads Daily Mail clickbait, proceeds to blame "scientists"
The thing that's bothering me is that they ended a question with a period. Why, random person on the Internet, why?