Until I saw this story about scientists finding proof of Okapis in the wild in the Democratic Republic of Congo I did not realise they were particularly rare.
I think this is because my father is interested in animals and one of my party tricks when I was a precocious child was to identify all sorts of animals from books and those sets of plastic zoo animals, therefore I have always known about them. When I have been to zoos I have always seen them alongside the giraffes and never really became aware that they are an obscure animal.
I checked with a colleague at work today, and he had never even heard of okapis before. I just assumed that they were as familiar to every one as gnus or antelope or whatever, but it turns out that they were unknown, except to the local tribes, until 1901. No wonder the family were impressed when I could identify it before I even went to school.
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