Isn't it strange that this animal looks like it's wearing striped socks? They have the head of a giraffe, the body of a wild horse, and the legs of a zebra, as if they were assembled into a new species. There must be a lot of people who haven't seen it, right?
In fact, this four-dissimilar animal is real, its name is "Okapia johnstoni", and it lives in the dense tropical rainforest of the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa.
Sensitive and alert, they live in seclusion deep in the jungle and once exist only in the legends of local aborigines, until 1901 when their specimens were acquired by the British explorer Harry Johnston.
Don't look at the okapi looks more like zebras, but biologists believe that they do not belong to the same family as zebras, but are close relatives of giraffes. The Okapi and giraffe are the only two species of animals in the giraffe family, and in contrast to the giraffes, which have several subspecies found throughout Africa, the okapi have no subspecies.
So, the Okapi has many similarities with giraffes, in addition to their long necks, they also have a black, tangleable tongue. The long tongue of the Okapi is about 30-36 cm long and can flexibly roll up the spring water, grasp branches and leaves, and clean the ears and comb the hair.
Okapi is a herbivorous animal that feeds on leaves, shoots, fruits, ferns and fungi.
They usually live alone, with males and females only briefly coming together for mating purposes. The male Okapi has two short horns on her head consisting of bone cones, while the females have hair wheels instead of bone cones. In the wild, the lifespan of this rare animal ranges from 20 to 30 years.
The most interesting thing is that the stripes on their buttocks and legs are completely the lower body of zebras, so some scientists have also proposed new ideas that the okapi is a hybrid of giraffes and zebras.
In particular, with the help of DAN detection, it was found that the number of chromosomes of okapi was more similar to the number of chromosomes of zebras, but not of giraffes. Moreover, the number of chromosomes in Okapi is variable, 44-46, and the variation in the number of chromosomes is rare in mammals, but very common in hybrids.
Another factual basis for this view is the rarity of the okapi, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists as an endangered species, a typical male sperm abnormality and a hybridization characterized by sporadic reproduction and reproductive defects.
When the okapi were first discovered in the early twentieth century, biologists classified them as giraffes because little was known about natural hybridization and genetic analysis, and a new generation of researchers were working on more scientific evidence to confirm the true origin of the hogah.
In the African savannah, giraffes and zebras will mix together in groups to feed, so there is potential reproductive contact, so the view that the okapi is a "hybrid" of giraffes and zebras may also be true, just like the lion tiger and the tiger lion.
In any case, what is more important now is to protect these rare animals from extinction, with rough estimates of wild okapis now between 10,000 and 30,000, and their numbers are dwindling due to habitat loss due to logging, mining and human settlement, as well as poaching.