Okapi: an UNphotoshopped animal

Nature can be really surprising!
Ladies and Gentlemen here is the amazing okapi!
It lives in central Africa (=Congo) and it is amazing for at least of a couple of reasons:

1) It looks like a photoshopped animal, doesn't it?
I would say the combination of a giraffe and a zebra!






2) It is a kind of living fossil!
Indeed it the closest relative of the prehistoric giraffes - the palaetragines - even closer than the giraffe! Basically when the palaestragines were roaming the earth (15 millions years ago), evolution favoured the ones who could reach tall trees. The descendants of those palaetragines are the nowadays giraffes, well suited for munching leaves from the acacia trees that grew across the plains of Africa. However some palaestragines moved into the forest and where they had never to change much to survive. The okapi is the descendant of them, a very close descendant.

PS
Since it lives in Congo, the Okapi is on the 50 cents Congolese banknote:








References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi
Why is the okapi is called a living fossil
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-10-amazing-living-fossils

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Library.nu alternatives

Image
Updated on May 7th, 2020    Are you looking for some good alternatives to the lost gigapedia, library.nu , legalreads.com , coinread.com,  bookos.org or libgen.info ? Well, here is a list that I update quite often and whenever you (yes, you !) give me new entries (also anonymously in the comments below). PLEASE do not ask me to download something for you! IMPORTANT Currently, many of you reach this page searching words like " en.bookfi.org alternatives", "library.nu alternatives" or "ebookoid", well I am not sure this will be the case in the near future... :( Due to the new guidelines against piracy , in the future, this post MAY NOT be listed among the search results you'll get from Google and/or  Bing. For this reason, I suggest you to save this page as bookmark in your browser, if you want to be always able to reach it :) Let's start with some 100% free and legal alternatives to Library.nu http://www.theassayer.org/  a *BIG* li
Read more

Where to get research papers for free

Image
Last update  April, 8th, 2018 After the post about ebooks , I have thought you may be interested on academic papers too and here I am! :) THANKS for your contributions to this post! On the subject education, there is also a new post about the free university courses you can attend online, for free!!! Anyway, if you are a PhD student or a researcher you need to download and study other people's scientific works. For most journals (the most important ones) your institution should have already a subscription. However you'll probably have already experienced that sometimes, you need a paper you cannot download through your institution, pretty annoying eh? So... how can you solve this problem? Where can you download research papers for free? Where to find free scientific journal articles? How to get that f*ck*ng full-text pdf? Are there alternatives to sci-hub ? Yes, just read below! By the way, is sci-hub down? NO, once again, just read below! I will
Read more

Italian Words in How I Met Your Mother

Image
In the last two seasons of how I met your mother, there are some Italian words/dialogues. Here are the most important elements HIMYM 8x21 - Romeward Bound. The full episode in English is available here In this episode of How I Met Your Mother, the first Italian words appear... Scuncigli OR sconcigli : it's a kind of pasta, with a seashell shape. Gigi ... alla porta : Gigi (it's a man name), let's go to the door. Marshall in Little Italy says  Maronn! namely Madonna and corresponds to the English expression "Oh My God!" ... ( you have how I much I laughed after having watched this scene!!! ) In the last scene, when Marshall talks with Lily, he says "Andiamo, fratello. Non mangiarti tutti i Funions" (Come on, bro. Don't Bogart all the Funions) NOTE 1: As Italian, I have to tell you that his pronunciation is really really bad! And it's interesting about this point, the comment available below ;) NOTE 2:
Read more