Meet my new creature crush: the okapi. Okapi's are the closest living relatives of the giraffe - the structural relationship is quite clear, they even share the same lengthy purple tongue, but their coloration (perhaps equally as amusing as that of a giraffe) is quite different. Okapis have a velvety chocolate/black coat, glowing with reddish highlights, their legs and flanks are splashed with slender white stripes, and they have what appear to be white socks up to their knees; it's bizarre coloration, until you see them in their natural habitat - the Ituri jungle of Central Africa - where that seemingly uncoordinated outfit becomes perfect camouflage for blending into the sun dappled shadows of dense jungle vegetation. The following photo is of the lush okapi diorama at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC - a beautiful illustration of the effectiveness of such unusual patterning in breaking up an animal's silhouette.
Okapis are exceptionally shy beasts, their elusive behavior once earning them the title of "African unicorn". It is suspected that they were known by the ancient Eqyptians, and forest dwelling African pygmies long knew them well enough to know they tasted good, but the okapi eluded European discovery right up until the 2oth century - quite a feat for such a large terrestrial mammal. Not until the turn of the century was a complete specimen of what the native Mbuti people called the "atti" finally collected, recorded, and the species graced with a scientific name: Okapia johnstoni, after the famed explorer, naturalist, and then British governor of Uganda, Sir Harry Johnston, who was the first to officially document the species.
Johnston had long had a fascination with the okapi, his interest peaked by reading Congo travelogue accounts (most notably from the expeditions of explorer Henry Morton Stanley) that referenced a mysterious, striped "forest horse". Fortuitously, in 1900, Johnston was asked by Belgian officials (Belgium then holding claim to the Congo) to rescue and return to the jungle a small band of Mbuti pygmies that had been captured and led into nearby British territory by a German showman (desiring to ship them to Europe for display at the Paris World's Fair). This he accomplished, and during the trek back to the Ituri, he was able to obtain a wealth of rare clues to the okapi's true appearance and habits, as only a keen native would know them. Back in Belgian territory, and armed with new information, Johnston set out on his own okapi expedition, wading through the epic heat, humidity, and inhospitable landscape of the jungle with high hopes. Unfortunately, not once did Sir Harry catch sight of the living, breathing beast with his own eyes. When he returned to his camp, clearly dejected, Belgian officers vowed to assist his cause (being somewhat well connected to bushmeat hunters themselves) and within a few months they successfully acquired a complete and unmarred specimen of the reclusive ungulate, then delivered the delicately removed skin and skull to Johnston. The following is an excerpt from an article Johnston wrote for McClure's magazine (the popular early 20th century American illustrated periodical) soon after his discovery, titled, "The Okapi: the Newly Discovered Beast Living in Central Africa" :
“Provided with guides, I entered the awful depths of the Kongo forest with my expedition, accompanied also by Mr. Doggett. the naturalist attached to my staff. For several days we searched for the okapi, but in vain. We were shown its supposed tracks by the natives, but as these were footprints of a cloven-hoofed animal, while we expected to see the spoor of a horse, we believed the natives to be deceiving us, and to be merely leading us after some forest eland. The atmosphere of the forest was almost unbreathable with its Turkish-bath heat, its reeking moisture, and its powerful smell of decaying, rotting vegetation. We seemed, in fact, to be transported back to Miocene times, to an age and a climate scarcely suitable for the modern type of real humanity. Severe attacks of fever prostrated not only the Europeans, but all the black men of the party, and we were obliged to give up the search and return to the grass lands with such fragments of the skin as I had been able to purchase from the natives. Seeing my disappointment, the Belgian officers very kindly promised to use their best efforts to procure for me a perfect skin of the okapi. Some months afterwards the promise was kept by Mr. Karl Eriksson, a Swedish officer in the service of the Kongo Free State, who obtained from a native soldier the body of a recently killed okapi.”
In addition to being an intrepid explorer, the multi-talented Sir Harry was also an accomplished natural history artist. Once he had finally procured his prefect okapi specimen, he produced the following set of carefully detailed illustrations: black and white drawings, and a full color painting - both of which appeared in the 1901 issue of McClure's referenced above. (A much more detailed history of the okapi's scientific discovery can be found at the
Okapia blog, and at the
American Museum of Natural History's Congo Expedition of 1909-1915 website.)
Remarkably, the first photos of wild okapi, alive and well in their jungle home, were taken just a few years ago, thanks to independent, motion activated cameras that could snap images without the presence of human beings. The first 3 photos below were captured in late 2008 by cameras set by the Zoological Society of London and the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (see more of those first ever photos here )... there's something so exhilarating - and definitely a little voyeuristic - about these images; like crime suspects staring skeptically through the 2-way mirror in an interrogation room, the animals photographed clearly sense something awry... they just don't know what. The following set of portraits reveals the okapi's rather unbelievable tongue, famous for being long enough for an individual to lick it's own eyes and clean it's own ears, inside and out. (photo credit: Phil Myers, images taken at the Cincinnati Zoo in '05)
On account of it's folkloric history, and relatively late introduction to the world of science, the okapi, along with the coelacanth, giant squid, and Ivory-billed Woodpecker, is now a symbol for the perseverance of myth and mystery in nature - it even became the emblem for the now defunct International Society of Cryptozoology. And as a sign that this stripy-bummed, doe-eyed, forest horse has truly emerged from it's centuries of hiding from humanity, there now exists not one but two facebook fan sites dedicated solely to the okapi and it's conservation.
Though it's numbers in the wild have not dipped low enough yet to qualify the species as "threatened", the okapi has, since 1933, been protected by law in it's homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1992 the Okapi Wildlife Reserve was created to further research the species and promote a captive breeding program; though, similar to the plight of many Central African forest species, deforestation, poaching, and the destructive forces of continuing civil war in the Congo remain ever present dangers to the okapi and all native conservation efforts. Thankfully, okapis are today somewhat well represented in zoos across North America and Europe - around 160 individuals live a life on display in captivity - so those of us hoping to catch a glimpse of this mythic creature need not duplicate the treacherous and disheartening jungle slog of Sir Harry Johnston in order to fall under the spell of the African unicorn for ourselves.
