Animal · DR Congo
Okapi
Okapia johnstoni — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The okapi looks like a horse with zebra stripes on its legs, but it is the giraffe's only close living relative and lives hidden in the rainforest of Congo. Its dark tongue can wash its own eyes.
Picture credit: k7hpn (CC BY 2.0) · NasserHalaweh (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the okapi live?
Home: Dense rainforest in the north-east of the Congo.
In the wild it lives in these countries: DR Congo.
Conservation status from the IUCN: endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 1.5 m at the shoulder, 2.5 m long. It weighs about 250 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
For a long time the okapi was only a rumour outside Africa. People in the Ituri forest knew it well, but science described it for the first time in 1901, which is why it is often called the last large animal to become known to the wider world. Up close the giraffe family shows: the same long dark tongue, about 45 centimetres, and in males the same short skin-covered horns, called ossicones. The stripes are not decoration. In the dim light under the trees they break up the animal's outline, and a calf can follow its mother's striped hindquarters through the undergrowth. Okapis live alone, eat leaves, buds, fruit and fungi, and are endangered because their forest is being cleared and hunted.
Find it on the globe
Okapi is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is the okapi related to the zebra?
No. Only the stripes look like a zebra's. The okapi belongs to the giraffe family and is the giraffe's closest living relative.
Why does the okapi have striped legs?
In the half-dark under the forest roof the stripes break up its outline, so a leopard finds it harder to see a whole animal. A calf also uses the striped back end of its mother as something to follow.
How many okapis are left?
Nobody knows exactly, because counting animals in thick forest is very hard. What is clear is that the numbers are falling as the forest is cut and hunted, and the okapi is listed as endangered.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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