Anne Innis Dagg resolved to know everything about the world’s tallest creature

When the bizarre creature first appeared in Florence, in 1487 at the court of the Medici, it caused a sensation. Bending down its long, long neck, it took food from children, and was fed with fruit by noblewomen from second-storey windows. In 1827, in Paris, a female giraffe presented to Charles X stirred an outbreak of giraffe-mania, with high-piled hairstyles, giraffe-spotted wallpaper and years on, some say, the design of the Eiffel Tower.

What happened to Anne Innis Dagg, when she was two and visiting the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, was just as momentous in its way. Being very small, and the giraffes very tall, she was naturally amazed. But when something suddenly frightened them, and they galloped with a flurry of necks and legs across their enclosure, that was beautiful.