The giraffe is a large African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus Giraffa. It is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on Earth. Traditionally, giraffes have been thought of as one species, Giraffa camelopardalis, with nine subspecies. Most recently, researchers proposed dividing them into up to eight extant species due to new research into their mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, and individual species can be distinguished by their fur coat patterns. Seven other extinct species of Giraffa are known from the fossil record.

Artiodactyls are placental mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla. Typically, they are ungulates which bear weight equally on two of their five toes: the third and fourth, often in the form of a hoof. The other three toes are either present, absent, vestigial, or pointing posteriorly. By contrast, most perissodactyls bear weight on an odd number of the five toes. Another difference between the two is that many artiodactyls digest plant cellulose in one or more stomach chambers rather than in their intestine as perissodactyls do. The advent of molecular biology, along with new fossil discoveries, found that cetaceans fall within this taxonomic branch, being most closely related to hippopotamuses. Some modern taxonomists thus apply the name Cetartiodactyla to this group, while others opt to include cetaceans within the existing name of Artiodactyla. Some researchers use "even-toed ungulates" to exclude cetaceans and only include terrestrial artiodactyls, making the term paraphyletic in nature.