The world's tallest animal is heading towards "silent extinction" as the population of giraffes have plummeted by 40 percent in the last 30 years, according to a new report. These majestic creatures are now placed at a "vulnerable" level on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

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Biologists and conservationists say that some of the major threats facing giraffes are habitat loss, illegal hunting, poaching, and disease.

In 2015, there are only 97,562 giraffes left from 163,000 back in 1985, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). As a result, the organization has increased the species' threat level along with 34 other animal and plant species.

According to IUCN co-chair Julian Fennessy, when humans build communities around the giraffes' habitats, giraffe populations usually decline significantly in that region.

Regions where giraffes have been most vulnerable are in eastern and central Africa. However, there are still significant increases of populations in southern Africa, according to Fennessy.

According to Noelle Kumpel of the Zoological Society of London, giraffes have disappeared in Eritrea, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Burkina Faso.

According to biologist Stuart Pimm from Duke University, there is a great tendency when popular or very familiar animal species are thought as doing okay since we see them in zoos, books, etc. and this becomes very dangerous.

To date, there are 860 extinct animal and plant species while about 13,000 are either endangered or critically endangered. Giraffes have been placed as a vulnerable species just before endangered.

However, there are also 700 new species of birds that are also on the IUCN's Red List, where more than one in 10 species risk of dying out. According to IUCN director general Inger Anderson, many species are already slipping away even before we can describe them, as this global extinction crisis is even more severe than we first thought.