A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
okapi
The okapi is the only living relative of the giraffe, a forest animal of the northeastern Congo with a dark velvety chestnut body, horizontal white stripes on the hindquarters and upper legs, and a long prehensile blue-black tongue it uses to strip leaves and to clean its own eyes and ears. It stands about five feet at the shoulder, lives alone, and moves quietly through dense understory.
Etymology
The name came into English from the languages of the Ituri Forest, where the animal was well known to the people living with it long before any European saw one. It is one of a small set of large mammals that entered the scientific record only in the twentieth century, and it entered with its local name attached rather than being given a European one.
Notes
Harry Johnston obtained skin and skulls in 1901 after hearing accounts of a forest animal that scientific opinion had assumed was a horse, and the description caused a considerable stir because a large mammal was not supposed to still be undescribed. The stripes work as camouflage in broken forest light and also appear to help a calf follow its mother. The okapi is the emblem of the Congolese institute that manages the country’s protected areas.