Many people know what a giraffe looks like. But not everyone can imagine his closest relative - okapi. These animals belong to the giraffe family of the artiodactyl order.
Okapi is a rare African animal that looks more like a horse or an antelope. The okapi has a beautiful short, chocolate-colored coat that shimmers with a red hue in the sun. Legs with light stripes, like a zebra. The light head has large tubular ears. The males have horns, they are small, about 15 cm long. The animal has a long bluish tongue, like a giraffe. Okapi with the help of it picks greens from branches for food, and also washes eyes and ears, because okapi are very clean. The weight of the animal is 250 kg, height - 1.7 m, length - 2.1 m. As a rule, males are slightly smaller than females.
Okapi in the wild can be found exclusively in the Congo. Their habitat is dense tropical forests. The animal keeps close to meadows and rivers, where vegetation is located lower. Perhaps this can explain the fact that his neck is not as long as that of a giraffe.
Okapi are sensitive, vulnerable beasts. They are very shy, afraid of the cold, especially drafts, react very painfully to a change of scenery, so they often die in captivity.
A newborn okapi is a rather large, but completely helpless animal. Born with a weight of about 20 kg, by the age of three, the okapi grows to the size of an adult animal. The life span of an okapi is 15-30 years.