Board Game Arena

The Giraffe requires space 4 and gives 3VP, the Anteater and Red Panda requires 2+2 space and gives 2+1 VP so why is the giraffe a better choice to leave out? Is it because the Red Panda has a +1 score ability for later rounds? Would be useful if that was explained in the tutorial.

There is no general rule about which animals are bad. If you have a lot of space and definitely don't run out of space, picking Giraffe usually good. It's just in many situations not an efficient animal and others could give more points with the same space.

I guess in the tutorial the problem with picking Giraffe is, that you would get another animal too that would brick your hand.

Just replayed the tutorial. The picks are pretty bad, but the fitting is fine. If you have the choice between keeping giraffe and red panda + 2/2 animal, both give the same points but 2 animals are more flexible. In this case red panda even has upside potential. Fitting smaller animals is usually easier in later rounds and if you have for example only 2 space left in the second year, you couldn't fit giraffe but you can keep anteater and release panda for +2-1=+1 instead of -3. So keeping the 2 over the giraffe is correct