Image # 315691
Photo note: Okapi diorama. "Okapi. African Belgian Congo." The Akeley Hall of African Mammals, AMNH.

In the 1890s, the explorer Henry Morton Stanley described the Okapi as a kind of forest donkey. Others had thought it might be an antelope. When the explorer Sir Harry Johnston sent a piece of striped okapi skin to the British Museum, London scientists announced the discovery of a new species of forest zebra.When a complete okapi was finally found 1901, biologists were astonished to find that its closest living relative was the giraffe.

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