What are the little horns in a giraffe are called and what is/was their function?

Congratulations Lauren! 

Thank you for your question! I've put my thinking cap on and also done some reasearch. But first my theory.

My Theory - Medieval Jousting.

There are many discussions online about the evolution of the giraffe. God, Intelligent design or Evolution. I'm pleased to say I've solved it! Back in medievil times people were bored. REALLY bored. They couldn't create blogs, watch tv or text their friends. So when they weren't at war with their neighbours they practiced their jousting skills. But some of the knights couldn't find anyone to play with, that's when they decided to genetically modiftied a deer so that they could play joust. The experiments we're perfect as the technology hadn't been perfected, which resulted in the change of fur colour, but low and behold a perfect jousting partner was born. The first giraffe was called Jeff and was a great sucess. Soon everyone wanted one. The giraffe had many advantages to a real jouster. The ability to extend it's neck and see exactly where to hit it's opponent came in very useful. Over time the best giraffes had the longest necks so that could knock the knight of thier horse before they were struck by the big stick. 

So, why are they all in africa? Well.. Jeff's great great great grandson, Dave, was the giraffe to the King of France. Unfortuantely Dave was very good and the King kept loosing, He lost so often people started making fun of how small and ineffective his stick was. One day the King was so annoyed be banished all the giraffe to a far far away place. Now known as Africa. Without a jousting partner, the King started wars with people.

The real answer

The name

The horn like pertrusions from a giraffes head are called ossicones. It is so named because they are made up of ossified cartilage. (What the ducks that?) Well.. Ossified cartilage is  hardened or calcification soft tissue to form a bonelike material. Words begining with os-, oss-, ost-, oste- os are all latin for bone. So, geniuses that they were they're actually BoneCones. (Not sure whether this is where the term 'boner' came from, but I'd like to think it might be) 

Ossicones are differant to horns purely because they remain covered in skin where as horns aren't.

Where'd they come from? 

The family

Giraffes have evolved from the same family as cattle and deer. Yes, goats, cows, deer, antelopes and giraffes are all related. (Thank god they stopped having family reunions a long time ago). There are many less well known branches of the family called Sivatherium and climacoceratids

largely less well known because they are long extinct. The giraffes closest living relatives are called Okapi (and just like the other Osbourne kids, they're really regretting not going on a reality TV show for fame and fortune and now languish in obscurity) The many genetic off spring largely changed shape and form through many variation because of the environments they were in. Variations of these species have been found in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia. All evolving differantly.

The horns

It is believed, (although no pay-per-view cable footage of this remains) that the ossicones were used for fighting. The ossicones were much bigger back in the day and like Deer they would have reasonably friendly fights with each other to establish who was in charge. (The two bucks circle each other, bend back their legs, lower their heads, and charge.) The male in charge after these fights got the pick of the mates. Giraffes still compete within their groups, but instead of using their ossicones they wrap their long necks around each other. 

Evolution at work

The male with the best mates produced more off spring. So you'd think that evolution would provide them with bigger better stronger ossicones/horns? Well.. no. You see sources of food were rare. Those with a longer neck were able to aquire more food and become stronger. So although they might have had smaller ossicones/horns, they were stronger. This ment that they won the fights and produced more off spring. Suddenly long necks were in and big ossicones/horns were out! They became the human dating equivelent of a tiny penis and no girl was interested. (Ossicones/horns - don't know when they started growing skin over them. They started as horns and then became ossicones.. at some point.)

Why have them now? 

Well.. I've searched the net and there are a few theories. But the most likey answer is they just got left over. Eventually they were small enough not to be 'ugly' and having them stopped being a mating factor so the genetics were never fully cleaned of them. Just like the appendix in humans. No one would stop going out with you because of the size of your appendics, so it's stayed, dispite being pointless. 

Personally though I think they've become the giraffe equivelent to a hard hat. If you've ever gone apple picking you'll know that it's useful to have something to stop branches wacking you in the head. Unfortunately there isn't any scientific evidence to support this but I'm yet to hear of a giraffes going "Ahh. my head! Bloody trees! Why can't we get some grass and eat like a cow? That's it I'm moving back to France!"

Want to know more?

http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/1519 - Other latin boner words

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Giraffe - General giraffe info

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_horns_of_a_giraffe 

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Okapi - The Okapi

I also learnt that ossification means a rigid, unimaginative convention. So feel free to impress people with things like "this convention on the colour of milk is suffering from ossification"

Lauren. I hope this answers your question. That's killed some time and hopefully sorted your homework ;-) Thanks for leaving a comment and I hope you'll be back to visit the blog again. 

Anyone got anymore questions?