The Animal that Looks Like a Zebra, Deer, and Giraffe All in One

Zebra-deer? Forest giraffe? Explore the fascinating world of the Okapi, its unique adaptations, characteristics, and conservation efforts. Learn how this elusive animal was "discovered," its adaptations for survival in the thick forest, and the importance of conservation projects in protecting this rare species.

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Links mentioned in the episode:
Okapi Conservation Project
Zoo partners with Okapi Conservation Project
IUCN Red List page for Okapi

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Podcast Music: Positive Carefree Folk Pop
Artist: Burgberg
Used with Full Music Standard Lic.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Often accused of being crossed between a zebra and an oversized deer, this animal is often referred to as being a forest giraffe. Let's say hello to the Okapi. I'm Rick Schwartz, educator, public speaker, and all-around curious guy. Over the years, my curiosity and experiences, along with the many people I have worked with, revealed to me we all have a desire to feel connected to the natural world. You're listening to Animals, Nature and You, a podcast that explores a connection between animals, nature, and humans. A podcast that celebrates learning more, following our curiosity, and reconnecting with the natural world. Welcome to another 10-minute Tuesday here on Animals, Nature and You. Of course, I'm your host, Rick Schwartz, but you probably knew that from the intro, and I'm really glad you're here because today we get to talk about an animal that when I first got to meet it, not only was I just enamored with their dark brown eyes and their silly long tongue, but just they're just such a fascinating species that is one of the mammals that was probably the most recently recorded by European scientists. And by recent, of course, we're talking early 1900s, but we'll we'll get into that. For right now, I want to just remind you, real quick, if you want to get in touch with me, we have a new thing here on the podcast. If you're listening on a podcast player, the very first link, you can send fan mail. So I'd appreciate it if you want to do that, or of course, always reach out on social media. But with that said, that out of the way, let's talk about the Okapi. This particular episode about the Okapi was inspired by last week's interview with Alexis, who runs Animals Anonymous Apparel. Now, she was saying that I believe it was the little blue penguins, was one of the reasons she first started looking into making her own apparel so she could have something because she was taking care of little blue penguins at the time and wanted some of that kind of apparel, but couldn't find it. Then that branched into also the Okapi. She wanted some Okapi stuff. And then that sold like crazy because other people are like, oh my gosh, there's nowhere you can get Okapi stuff. So it just grew from there. But I I don't need to rehash the whole episode. If you haven't listened to it, finish listening to this episode and then go check it out. It's last Thursday's episode. It is a really, really great talk. So that inspired this, though. Let's talk about this zebra deer forest giraffe thing. So they're not related to zebras, but people sometimes think that because their back hips and down their legs have stripe patterns similar to a zebra and also on the front legs from what would be about the elbows down, roughly, depending upon the individual. Overall, their body color is a dark brown. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I'll put up some pictures so you can see what they look like. If you look closely, though, at the head of an Okapi, there's the giveaway as to why we call them the forest giraffe. They have a very similar skull structure to the giraffe. And males have ossicones, like giraffe do also. Now, just side tangent here, ossicone is actual bone of the skull moving forward, making cone-like shapes, different than a horn. Horns made of keratin, like a hair or fingernails, so think of a rhinal horn or a bullhorn, those will grow out of an actual bud area for the horn, or maybe even you'd call it like a follicle, if you will, or multiple follicles depending upon the structure of the horn. Antlers are bone also, but they grow from an antler bud like a horn grows from a bud, but this puts out calcium. New nutrients go into growing these every year, then the nutrient stops and it dies and they they drop off. Ostecones are permanent part of the skull. So when you see a giraffe that's passed away or a male uh okapi, you'll see it's actually part of the skull, permanently there, like any other piece of the skull. So it's a little bit different, but they share that with the giraffe. Dentition or tooth structure is similar, digestive system is similar, hoof structure is similar. What's different? Well, it's not only just the coloration, of course, but then if you think about the okopi, if I remember correctly, they're about four to five feet in measurement at the shoulder. So when you think of an animal on all fours, we often measure up from the foot to the shoulder. They're about four to five feet. When you're talking about giraffe, anywhere from nine to eleven feet at that point, depending upon male-female in genetics. So significantly different in height. The length of the neck, of course, is very different. Uh they both have the seven vertebrae, like most mammals do, but the size of the vertebrae are quite different. Uh the weight is another great example. I believe okapis are 450 to 700 pounds, again, depending upon male-female genetics, where then you look at the giraffe, anywhere from 1,500, excuse me, 1,500 pounds up to 3,000 pounds in that in that range, of course. So there's a size difference. Now, how are they related? How do they look so different, but they're considered related? Well, when we look at the genetics, excuse me, we look at the genetics and the taxonomy. Imagine, if you will, close your eyes and well, not if you're driving. Don't do that if you're driving. Imagine a line going straight up, so like a like a trunk of a tree. We'll call that line the giraffe and okopi ancestor. One branch goes off one direction, and that is the okopies starting to branch off of that common ancestor. And then off the other side, the giraffe will branch off. Over millions of years, there are other branches that come off each of those branches to now give us what we have today. The other ancestors having died off over time through the different eras and epochs and all of the change of time of millions of years. These other ancestors start to die off and no longer exist, and we're left now with giraffe species we have that we are accustomed to seeing out in the plains of Africa, if you will. And then the Okapi, which is only found in the Aturi Forest. And this is in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, this rainforest area. You might often hear about gorillas in that space as well. So very similar habitat, very thick jungle. Almost, I'd be willing to bet if you look at a Tarzan movie, you look at that thick jungle, dense trees, probably similar type of visual habitat to that. In fact, it's so thick and dense in there that the dark coloration of the Okapi and those striped pants and and socks that they have work really well to help break up their body pattern as little dapplings of sunlight come through in that forest. This breaking up of the pattern is important for them. They are solitary, they don't hang out in a herd. So it's important that the leopards who would normally hunt them not be able to find them. That's the goal of the Okapi, right? In fact, the you look at the eyesight of the giraffe and the eyesight of the Okapi, Okapi's eyesight is quite poor in comparison simply because as they evolved over these millions of years to live in their forest, they don't need to see far because there's too many plants in the way. So how do they get around that? Well, they've got a great sense of smell. How do they find each other? On their hooves, they have this sort of sticky, tarry, sappy, kind of like oily gick that they leave behind. It has their own individual signature scent. So one Okapi can smell that and go, oh, there's a male over there who who he's he seems older and maybe bigger and more dominant than me, so I'm I'm not gonna mess with him if I'm a male. Or it might be I'm a female looking to mate, and there's a boy that way, so I'm gonna go talk to him. Could be I smell a female, but she's already pregnant, so I'm not gonna bother with her if I'm a boy looking to mate, or it's a female who would like to mate, and I'm a boy who's wanted to mate, so let's go check her out. So they can actually communicate by telling who left what scent where on those hoofs uh scent markings, if you will. They also have an incredibly good sense of hearing. So they usually can avoid people and other animals very easily because they can hear them coming long before. In fact, I think I've already mentioned they were first recorded by European scientists in the early 1900s, I believe it was 1901, but I might have double-checked that. Now, of course, the people who lived in the forest who live amongst these animals, they know they're there. They have seen them, they have seen traces of them. But European scientists for the longest time heard these stories and thought, well, this is some sort of weird ghost story of the forest, and they didn't believe it. When they finally did record it, and unfortunately recording back then means they would kill them, send the pelts back to the museum so they could have them stuffed and looked at and all that, you know, describe it properly. He sent drawings and a pelt back to the museum in England, I believe, I think it was London, but I don't remember for sure. But as the story goes, anyhow, is that the curators there did not believe this person. They did not believe this animal existed. They thought they were trying to put a joke over them or pull a prank on them, that somehow they got the natives to sew together some sort of multiple pelts of different animals to try and help bring this crazy foast crazy ghost story of the forest. Wow, easy for me to say, into public realm. But actually it was the Okapi, a real animal. Now, how do moms and babies work? Well, they work together because when the baby's born, mom is raising by himself. These are solitary animals. Mom will leave the baby. The baby can walk usually within 30 minutes, but when she goes off to feed and get water and all that, she'll usually leave the kiddo behind. So how does she find him if they don't want to uh alert any leopards? Well, they do this thing called infrasound. They can do a sound communication that is well below our ability to hear it, but they can hear it. They can communicate back and forth. Uh let me rephrase that. I don't think the babies can do it. I think only mom can do it. The baby can do whistles and bleats, but the mom does the sound to let the baby know where it is. The recordings that have been done by scientists show that the frequency is so low they do not believe the leopards can hear it, that it's below the sound, even leopards who have better hearing than you and I, they cannot hear the sound. Absolutely brilliant. So great sense of hearing, great sense of smell, mediocre sight, but of course, don't really need great sight when you're in the middle of the forest anyway. So, what are some of the challenges they face if they're so well equipped to live in the forest and avoid leopards? Well, unfortunately, where they live in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there's been a lot of unrest. So there's been a lot of wars there, and that, of course, is challenging for anything in nature, any animals, any wildlife, because, well, war is war. The other part of it, too, is there's been a lot of poaching. And then there's also a lot of illegal mining and stripping of land, attempt to get oil, attempt to get minerals, et cetera. And it's not like they dig a hole really carefully and they it ends up destroying waterways. They will strip mine areas, meaning they remove whole hillsides, forests, et cetera. So you might have heard me mention before in the past the importance of recycling our old technology because there is a mineral that's mined called Colton that is used for our technology, cell phones, iPads, et cetera. And to get to it, of course, they do a lot of this mining. It's found in Africa. So if we can recycle that tech, it helps. Okapi face that challenge as well, along with the gorillas and a lot of other species there. Now, there is a group called the Okapi Conservation Project. They I'll put links down below. They also have a link to the zoos they work with because zoos are pivotal at this point. A lot of people have bad attitudes towards zoos, but the reality is modern zoos that work collectively together with conservation groups, are doing the work to maintain safe populations, to make sure these populations can stay strong, genetically diverse, and ready to be replaced into the wild if need be, or when the time comes, or should the wild population disappear altogether, that means at least the animal is not gone from the planet altogether. Nonetheless, I'll put links down for them. They're doing great work. Why it why is this needed? Well, we kind of cover all the challenges. The most recent IUCN recording, I think it was from 2015, was the last time the assessment was done, put them at about 10,000 individuals. And of course, it's about because, well, they take into account the fact that you can count this many in this much space, and we know there's some habitat. The others might say closer to 12,000, some say 10 to 20,000, again, because it is very challenging to get exact numbers, and those assessments haven't been done super recent. Nonetheless, we do know there is habitat loss in a wide variety of different ranges and areas, so we can assume the numbers are probably dwindling. The cool thing about the Okapi Conservation Project is they're not just working with zoos, though, they're also doing a lot of work about boots on the ground. They're making sure rangers are in space, stopping poaching. If you go to their website, you can see how much poaching has dropped since they have implemented a lot of their work. Of course, the problems aren't solved completely, but they are heading in the right direction, and that's what's important. So that is a lot. I think we covered everything uh in a little over 10 minutes again. Sorry for going over, but either way, I really do enjoy doing these little 10-minute episodes. If you'd like to get in touch, like I mentioned, there's a fan mail link for those of you who are listening. You can also find me on my website, zoolyc.com or zoology rick on just about any social media that I'm on. If you're watching on YouTube, feel free to leave a comment, reach out to me that way, whatever it might be. All of those links nonetheless will be in the show notes below. Last but not least, if you are feeling kind enough to take a few extra minutes, I would really appreciate you leaving a review or leaving some stars wherever you might be listening to this podcast. This doesn't help it rank, this doesn't change its standing in the algorithm, but it does give some social credit. So if someone's looking through for something to listen to or watch, seeing that other people have left stars or reviews does have an impact. It does make them go, hmm, I want to check this out. And as we have talked with so many other people, it's community, it's coming together, it's a group of us that makes change. Change for protecting wildlife, change for protecting animals for nature, for ourselves. Coming together with people that are like-minded is also important for us. We find our people, we find our community. So by leaving those stars or leaving some reviews, that will help others find us and we can get together and do even more for animals, nature, and you. All right, have a good one, everybody.