The Journalist and the Giraffe. Chapman Pincher’s paper in Nature

There cannot be many journalists who still have a scientific paper they published in the 1940s quoted in current discussions on an old evolutionary problem. There is though one—Chapman Pincher†. He suggested a different interpretation to that then current on the evolution of the long neck of the giraffe, that exemplar used to enlighten schoolchildren on the difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian mechanisms of evolution.

I have previously covered Chapman Pincher’s early career as a biologist before he hit the big time as a science and defence correspondent for the Daily Express. It was only when I read further into his autobiography which he wrote shortly before his death in 2014 aged 100 (finding on the way the sources of his leaks of government information) that I learnt of his paper in Nature.

One of his sources for science stories was the joint-editor of Nature, Jack Brimble*. Brimble showed the content of each issue to Pincher before publication  and it was Brimble who in 1949 published his paper (then always as a ‘letter’ to Nature) on the origins of the long neck of the giraffe.

Jack Brimble

Pincher argued that a much better explanation for the long neck was not the selective advantage suggested by Darwin of being able to reach leaves in tall trees but because of the advantage of long legs in providing a longer stride and therefore a greater speed to escape predators. The neck had then to be concomitantly long in order for the head to be brought to ground level for drinking. Pincher wrote:

So, I suggested that, as with the evolution of so many animals, it was the predator-prey relationship which had been responsible, not occasional food dearths.

Frederic Wood Jones FRS (1879-1954) a classical anatomist, who had worked on all sorts of biological problems and phenomena from the formation of coral reefs to the lesions caused by judicial hanging, with very strange views on evolution and the value of genetics, wrote to the editor in reply to Pincher. Wood Jones pointed out that he and Robert Broom FRS (1866-1951)—the famous primate palaeontologist and anatomist also possessed of very strange views on evolution by ‘spiritual agencies’—had come up with the same idea as Pincher. The publications quoted were obscure: a book by Broom, Darwin and the Giraffe, published in South Africa in 1945, and an article by Wood Jones in the Manchester University Medical School Gazette of 1946. In post-war Britain it is not surprising that Pincher had not been aware of them.

Pincher’s paper is still discussed along with the original and more recent ideas on how the Giraffe acquired its long neck. A long paper argued it was the result of sexual selection while another disputed that claim. The giraffe continues to intrigue those seeking to determine the single or multiple selective advantages provided by an ever longer neck while at the same time providing false hope to the creationists whose beliefs infest the internet.

Me? Having watched Giraffes feeding in trees the wild numerous times, I’m still with Darwin for the initial selective advantage.

…and the take-home message for Chapman Pincher’s success:

his ‘Who knows wins’.

Reticulated Giraffe. Northern Kenya 1991

†Henry ('Harry') Chapman Pincher (1914-2014)

*Lionel John Farnham Brimble (1904-1965) 

Mitchell G, Sittert S van, Skinner JD. 2009. Sexual selection is not the origin of long necks in giraffes. Journal of Zoology 278, 281-286

Pincher C. 1949. Evolution of the giraffe. Nature 164, 29-30

Pincher C. 2014. Dangerous to Know. London: Biteback

Simmons RE, Scheepers L. 1996. Winning by a neck: sexual selection in the evolution of giraffe. American Naturalist 148, 771-78

Wood Jones F. 1949. Evolution of the giraffe. Nature 164, 323