Okapis in danger of extinction

Okapis are strange mammals who inhabit eastern Congo.  The wars and the decrease of their natural environment has reduced their numbers to less than 10,000 with risk of extinction.

This forest-dwelling cousin of the giraffe is also unmistakable due to its very peculariar shape and colouration. It reaches a head-body length of 200-210 cm, a shoulder height of 150-170 cm, and a body-weight of 20-250 kg. The eyes are large and dark, the ears large and broad, the tongue very long. Males have one pair of short backward directed frontal horns that are covered with hair. The body is short and compact with a sloping back like the giraffe, but the neck is much shorter. The legs are rather long in proportion to the body. The tail is about 30-42 cm long and has a terminal tuft.

The fur is short and sleek. Its general colour is velvety dark chestnut. The sides of the head are light grey, The upper parts of the forelgs, lower rump, tighs and buttocks are marked with sharply contrasted conspicuous transverse white stripes. The lower parts of the limbs are white except for a longitudinal dark stripe in front of the forelegs and a horizontal black band above the hooves on each leg.

The okapi's preferred habitat is dense, damp forest. It is diurnal, and lives solitary, in pairs or in small family gropups, never in herds.

After a pregnancy of 425 to 491 day one single calf of a bout 16 kg is born during the rainy season from August to October. Females attain sexual maturity ar an age of about 20 months. Under zoo conditions okapis may reach an age of well over 30 years.

Okapis arebrowsers feeding on the leaves, fruit and seeds of many plants.

The classification of the okapi as a giraffe species has been challenged recently (Kurt Benirschke, 2006, in Zool. Garten NF  76, 197-198) and have been put forward suggesting that the okapi is a close relative of the nilghai antelope of India, which has the same number of chromosomes, the same chemical composition of the bile, and a similar placenta structure.

Did you know?
that the okapi was the last large African mammal species to become known to science? It has been described in 1901 by the then Secretary of the London Zoological Society, on the basis of some small skin pieces, as "Equus (?) johnstoni sp.nov., an apparently new species of zebra from the Semliki Forest". In 1904 the geologist Dr. J. J. David of Basel (Switzerland) was the first European whoever saw, and shot, an okapi. The skin and skeleton of this animal are still preserved at the Basel Natural History Museum. In 1919 the first live okapi arrived in Europe, where it lived, for only 51 days, at Antwerp Zoo. In 1954, Antwerp was also the first zoo where an Okapi was bred.