In a study conducted on Espanola Island which is Galapagos, researchers followed the Nazca birds in the hope of finding a correlation between human behavior and animal behavior. The Nazca Boobies birds are the whitest of all sea birds.  They have this peculiar behavior called sibling murder or siblicide. It happens when there is more than one egg that hatches and competes for food. By killing the sibling, one chick gets all the food instead of just 50%. Interesting but scientists have connected this somehow to human behavior in explaining how instinctively a chick has in survival and adapting.

David Anderson who is an ecologist with the Wake Forest University specializing in evolution says that, “You don’t expect to see animals wasting time, bothering with a neighbor’s chick, when it could be doing something that benefits its fitness, like finding a mate.” And yet, this is exactly what the Boobies do. Dr. Anderson took his graduate students to study the animals in their natural habitat for 3 straight breeding seasons. Their findings include that the female Boobies normally lay just 2 eggs but care for only one. They call it abusive behavior because the parent Boobie chooses one egg over the other. Then, if both eggs hatch, the parent allows the chicks to fight each other for survival.

So how does this have anything to do with women being called chicks? When women are threatened, they will turn aggressive and can even fight close relatives if the need arises. However, they almost never take it to the extreme by killing a person. The chick label is therefore more because of the connotation on pecking which researchers refer to nagging in human behavior. This is one way of looking at why men call women “chicks.” Also, for some reason, they think that it’s a trendy way of calling women that makes appear young and hip.

Having lost their homes, the White Giraffes began to move closer to human homes. In the past 10 years, conflicts from the white giraffe attacks on crops and property has increased and become so common. White giraffes have come to like eating mango and cowpea. They can go through a whole farm in one night, ruining the economy and lives of many people in the process.
Studies show that white giraffes have done harm in 3 different ways to crops:

1. They target harvested cowpeas that have been left to dry in the field
2. They enter storage facilities and granaries and loot the cowpea crop that have already been processed
3. They eat off the mango trees even before they can be harvested

In terms of loss for humans, the cost is tremendous. The local authorities have said that more than 50% of families have consistently lost income and the attraction of white giraffes in bringing in tourists cannot compensate for the loss. The people are fast becoming desperate and angry at these animals and have begun to fight back. Many of them cannot even afford to build fences because they keep losing their harvest.

The white giraffes are merely looking for food sources, and they can’t be blamed for not being afraid of humans anymore. It would appear that their instinct to survive is stronger than their fear of humans. Farmers have resorted to looking for alternative income sources instead of trying to fight what they think is the inevitable loss of crop.