Why does the giraffe has a long neck according to Gregor Mendel?

Question

Why does the giraffe has a long neck according to Gregor Mendel?

Answer 1

Contrary to popular belief, current research shows that giraffes do not have long necks to reach food, rather they are used as "clubs" when competing with other males to mate with females. Giraffes with bigger, longer, stronger necks usually win and therfore get to mate passing on their genes to the next generation.  Over the years (hundreds of thousands) the species necks were bigger, longer and stronger.

Answer 2

I never heard Mendel said anything about giraffe neck o_O'

all I knew were:

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: giraffe stretches the neck, so that the offspring will have inherited longer neck

Charles Darwin: all giraffes had short neck, but some were mutated and get slightly longer over time. this giraffes with longer neck mutated more and more to get offspring with longer neck, while the giraffes with short neck extinct due to the loss in competition for food.

Answer 3

Additional information:

Lamarck's views have not been substantiated.

Darwin believed that the giraffe population had inherent natural variability in neck length.  The long-necked individuals were SELECTED in that they were more likely to reproduce (probably because they could compete better for leaves on the high trees, but maybe the females preferred the long-necked males, or some other reason.)  Therefore, the genes for having a long neck were passed along, and the others were not.  Over time, the population became increasingly long-necked.

Darwin's grandfather postulated that women had altered the human population over generations by selecting for the least hairy and most intelligent men.