Big news
If true, this is indeed sensational news. It sounds like a sort of modified (no pun intended) Lamarckism (if the giraffe needs a longer neck to reach the leaves it's dna somehow "knows" and favors longer-necked genes) as opposed to the statistical process of natural selection.
This would explain a lot of remarkable adaptations which are difficult to explain stochastically, but it also seems dangerously close to ID or creationism. I'd feel a lot more charitable towards this idea if someone could propose a mechanism. Besides, intelligent design doesn't carry much weight if the Designer has to be continuously tweaking his creations because he can't get them right the first time around.