Ever try to touch your nose with your tongue? That's nothing! The okapi can touch its ears with its ong tongue. Not only that, the rest of the okapi's body makes it look as if it were created from the spare parts of other animals.

Standing about six feet tall, the okapi has the neck and small honrs of its relative, the giraffe, the ears of a donkey, the stripes of the zebra on its rump and legs, and the cloven hooves of an antelope.

With its unusual looks, the okapi is one of the rarest animals in the world. Until 1900, no one outside the African jungle had ever seen an okapi. Only the pygmies and other jungle natives knew this strange creature. Even after the okapi was discovered by visitors from the outside world, many people still could not believe that such an odd-looking animal really existed.

Finding an okapi is not easy. It is a very shy animal which stays in the deepest part of the jungle. It spends its days quietly eating the tender leaves from trees which it can reach with its long tongue.