Oxford Insights: The Giraffe’s Tale

Oxford Insights are short videos created by Rob Walters revealing secrets of Oxford: the city, its university and colleges. Most people know a little about Oxford, Insights takes that knowledge to another level via brief, behind the scene glimpses of little known places, stories and events. Here we turn the Insights spotlight onto The Giraffe’s Tale, an insight which encompasses the Natural History Museum, its founder, Sir Henry Acland, the college of Christ Church, and of course a giraffe’s tail. The museum describes itself as holding an internationally-significant collection of natural history specimens and archives in a stunning example of neo-Gothic architecture. Amongst that collection are many fossilised or skeletal remains including a giraffe, this video tells the amusing story of that giraffe and how and why it has a false tail.