Ever hear of a Okapi?

Check this animal out. I never heard of it until this past week and I showed it to Melissa and she also had never heard of it. Its called an Okapi.

from CNN.com:

Rare okapi born at Illinois zoo
POSTED: 8:49 a.m. EST, November 24, 2006

BROOKFIELD, Illinois (AP) — The birth of an okapi — an endangered African animal that looks a little bit zebra, a little bit giraffe — was announced this week by the local zoo.

Since her September 27 birth, Sauda, or “dark beauty” in Swahili, has tripled in size: She weighs about 157 pounds (71 kilograms) and stands more than 3 feet (.9 meters) tall at the shoulder. She could grow to 500 pounds (225 kilograms)and 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

The Brookfield Zoo became the site of the first okapi birth in North America in 1959, and since then 28, including Sauda, have been born there, mammal curator Ann Petric said.

Sauda is on public display through a video feed from her nesting area with her mother. She will make her debut in the zoo’s African forest exhibit in the spring.

First discovered by Westerners in the animals’ native Congo in the early 1900s, the secretive okapi, known to live only in a forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, still hold many mysteries for researchers.

The zoo’s Web site is tracking the calf’s development, including the fact that she tried to stand 16 minutes after birth.

Part Zebra, part Giraffe, all cop!

Crazy animal, its like the platypus of horse family. Kind of like how the scorpion is the platypus of the arachnid family part spider, part lobster, all cop!

–Socram

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