Dung DNA Gives Clues to the Shy Okapi's Lifestyle

Try to read up on the okapi and you won't find much. This African mammal is most often seen next to the adjective "elusive." But even if we can't find any okapi, we can learn about their lifestyle through their DNA—and we can find their DNA in their feces. The okapi is an ungulate, like a cow. Or really like a giraffe, its closest relative. It has an elegant face, a long bluish tongue, and a zebra-striped rear end. It lives in the dense rainforest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, chewing tree leaves in privacy. No one in the Western world knew the animal existed until the 20th century. "One of the great things about studying okapi was that there was so little known about them in advance," says David Stanton, a PhD student at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. "So in this sense, everything that we found ...