TierZoo, winner of the Streamy Award for Learning and Education, on giraffes and pronghorns

I promised "a short video post...as the fall semester begins" today. I surprised myself by finding another awards show to blog about, the 2023 Streamy Awards, which were presented last night. One winner stood out to me, TierZoo, the YouTube channel of Patrick Lacey. He won a Streamy for Learning and Education, beating last year's winner, Tom Scott, and the previous year's winner, Veritasium. As best as I can tell, this is Lacey's/TierZoo's first nomination and therefore first win. Congratulations!

I also surprised myself by realizing that I'd never embedded any of TierZoo's videos on this blog, even though I'm a fan of the channel and have watched every one of his videos on YouTube. I really enjoy the presentation style, as I'm both a biologist and a gamer, and find TierZoo's conceit of the world as the setting of an MMO called "Outside" amusing and insightful. I guess I never found an opportunity to do so until now. Also, I find his video descriptions lacking. I like good video descriptions on this blog.

I'm making up for not featuring TierZoo's work here before by sharing the channel's two most recent videos, beginning with one asking Are Giraffes OP?


The video description is a promotion to watch his next video on Nebula, so I'm sharing my comment on this video instead.

"First we have the cheetah...on a serious note, first, we have the leopard." Not so fast. Years ago, I watched a video of a band of three or four young male cheetahs take down a giraffe. It took all of them working together and it lasted for quite a while, but they did succeed, so it's not impossible, although I've never seen it again.

You also mentioned the camel as a possible analog to the giraffe. Aepycamelus (formerly Alticamelus) of North America actually achieved giraffe proportions during the Miocene.

The viewers roundly ignored that comment. Oh, well.

Now the sequel TierZoo promoted at the end of the giraffe video. Americas' Secret Top Tier Animal.


Cheetahs, particularly the extinct American species, and American lions, have cameos in this video as well. As a paleontologist, I appreciate that. Also, it never occurred to me that golden eagles were large enough to prey on pronghorns until I watched this video. As I'm fond of writing, it's a good day when I learn something new. I hope my readers think so, too, and found these videos as entertaining and informative as I did.

Stay tuned for another short video post tomorrow as I readjust to my regular teaching schedule.