This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Just like humans have virtually unique sets of fingerprints,

every giraffe has a unique set of spots. Not that those spot patterns really help

wildlife biologists identify their study subjects in real time.

We have more than 3,000 individuals so I have a hard time myself just keeping track of a few humans.

So I have trouble with giraff's patterns as well.

Derek Lee is a wildlife biologist and population ecologist at Penn State

and with the Wild Nature Institute, a research consultancy group.

He and his collaborators have been tracking drafts for seven years throughout 1,500 square miles in Tanzania.

And they've amassed a library of 70,000 giraffe photos along the way.

Photographing the animals isn't that hard, he says.

The hard part is the C.C. flies, constantly biting us in our face and hands while we're trying to take pictures.

Now they've used image analysis software to study the spots of mothers and their calves.

And they found that baby giraffs inherit at least some particular elements of their patterning from their moms, like how circular the

spots are and how jagged the edges are. They also found that calves with larger spots were more

likely to survive their first months on the savannah,

perhaps because the spots better mimic the dappled sunlight

in the bushes, where calves like to hide

from hungry lions and hyenas.

The results, and a lot of giraffe patterns patterns are in the journal Pure J.

It's perhaps not surprising that a physical characteristic that protects an individual from being eaten

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