May 2, 2022 • 35 mins
The okapi became known to European explorers in the late 19th century, and then several explorers tried and failed to even see a live okapi. Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston often gets credit for its discovery, but there's much more to the story than that.
Research:
- “Obituary: Dr. Wilhelm Junker.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, vol. 24, 1892, pp. 148–50, http://www.jstor.org/stable/196694. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022.
- “Newly Discovered Beast of the Congo Forests.” Saturday Evening Kansas Commoner. June 27, 1901. https://www.newspapers.com/image/383188816/?terms=%22equus%20johnstoni%22&match=1
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Wilhelm Junker". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Apr. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Junker
- L., R. Dr. P. L. Sclater, F.R.S. . Nature 91, 455 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091455a0
- H., M. Sir Harry Johnston, S.G.M.G., K.C.B. Nature 120, 339–340 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120339a0
- Kinder, John M. “Year Zero: Restocking the Post-war Zoo.” National WWII Museum New Orleans. Sept. 21, 2021. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/restocking-post-world-war-ii-zoos
- Silverstein, Raymond O. “A note on the term “Bantu” as first used by W. H. I. Bleek.” African Studies. Volume 27. 1968. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00020186808707298
- “Okapi’s Half-century.” Zooquarium. Spring 2014. https://www.eaza.net/assets/Uploads/Zooquaria/ZQ85.pdf
- “A MOST CURIOUS ANIMAL, A CULTURAL SYMBOL, A SPECIES ON THE BRINK.” Okapi Conservation Project. https://www.okapiconservation.org/the-okapi/
- “World Okapi Day.” IUCN. Oct. 18, 2021. https://www.iucn.org/news/species-survival-commission/202110/world-okapi-day
- “Bronx Zoo Debuts Its Baby Okapi.” WCS Newsroom. July 27, 2009. https://newsroom.wcs.org/News-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4802/Bronx-Zoo-Debuts-Its-Baby-Okapi.aspx
- Brzezinski, Bartosz. “Of okapis and men: Antwerp Zoo helps preserve endangered species.” Flanders Today. Aug. 14, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160814194411/http://www.flanderstoday.eu/living/okapis-and-men-antwerp-zoo-helps-preserve-endangered-species
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Aug. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-Hamilton-Johnston
- Raffaele, Paul. “The Pygmies’ Plight.” Smithsonian. December 2008. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-pygmies-plight-93401092/
- Lindsey, Susan Lyndaker, et al. “The Okapi: Mysterious Animal of Congo-Zaire.” University of Texas Press. 1999.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. I have
wanted to do this episode for a long time. I know,
(00:22):
I think I've mentioned it to you like four times
over the last several years at least. UM. So, if
you visit any zoo or facility that has a copy
in their collection, you will often hear or see the
information that this animal was discovered by the Western world
in the early twentieth century. And we have two very
hard air quote that discovery, because of course indigenous populations
(00:45):
have known about them for a long time. We will
talk about how important this animal is to the area
where it naturally lives. Um. And every time I hear that,
I kind of want to stand up and tell everyone
they're like all of the other tourists that there were
certainly people who lived in Africa who knew about the copy,
But I also don't want to be that disruptive. They
probably wouldn't welcome that on the little Safari ride. Um.
(01:07):
And most of the time there will have actually been
some mention or phrase that indicates that no no, that
was just to the Western world. But I also know
that in scenarios like that, people miss nuance and I worry.
So today we will talk about how a series of
efforts on the parts of various European explorers brought this
animal to the attention of the European naturalist community. Again
(01:30):
not a discovery. UM, this is one where I, you know,
often will do ones where it's like, oh, acute animal.
Oh no, horrible things. UM. I knew the horrible things
were there, So there were no surprises in that regard.
But we should of course let people know that. Um,
sometimes in the quest to collect animal specimens, particularly when
(01:53):
you don't know anything about that animal, people are ding
dongs and so there is some sad animal stuff in
this and yeah, so just know that going in it
was also happening concurrently with some horrific things imposed onto
the people of the region by Europeans. That's totally outside
(02:14):
the scope of this episode. Yes, I mean, we kind
of hint at it to give the shape of what
was going on, right, but we don't we don't get
deep into all of the politicking that was going on
in the We mentioned the land grabbing, but we're not
going super deep into all of that. You see the
rails of it. As we're telling the story O copy
(02:35):
of John Stoney, we'll talk about that name. And a
bit is a mammal. It has a primarily russet red
body with striped flanks, and because of those distinctive stripes,
people often assume, particularly lay people, that this must be
related to the zebra. It's actually in the same family
as the giraffe. It's roughly the same size as a horse,
(02:56):
standing about five ft at the shoulder and six ft
at the head, so it's at the under two ms.
The main natural habitat for the okapi is the Autouri forest,
which is a tropical rainforest in what is the Democratic
Republic of Congo today, and this forest area is in
a northeastern section of the Congo River basin in the
equatorial region, kind of right in the middle of Africa.
(03:19):
The climate in this area is actually pretty consistent throughout
the year, with two rainy seasons, and the temperature is
likely much milder than you may expect. The average temperature
is seventy five point nine degrees fahrenheit, with highs and
lows of seventy degrees and ninety degrees. If you do
your temperature and celsius, that's an average of twenty four
(03:39):
point four degrees, a low of twenty one point one,
and a high of thirty two point two. That sounds
pretty lovely to me. Um The Atouri Forest is home
to all kinds of animals, of course, in addition to
the Okapi, including birds, monkeys, chimpanzees, bush babies, bongos, pangolins, elephants,
all kinds of insects, a mix of diurnal and nocturnal species.
(04:03):
It is the most bio diverse area of Africa. The
copy are believed to have existed for six or seven
million years. This animal is also the symbol of the
Congo and images of a copy appear on the country's
bank notes, even on their military uniforms and talk. John Lucas,
founder and president of the O Copy Conservation Project, said, quote,
(04:27):
you don't have to go up to anybody in Congo
and explain what an O copy is. No everywhere else
but not there, which is an indicator too of how
long it has just been part of the culture there.
But to tell the story of how the Western world
learned of the O copy, we have to start with
a pretty familiar name, and that is Dr David Livingstone.
(04:48):
There is an entire episode in the archives about him
from previous host Sarah and Deblinus, so we won't rehash
his entire story. The important thing here is that he
went to Africa, and because he got himself lost UH,
he becomes the first, although very minor, link in the
chain of how the Western world learned about this animal.
(05:09):
How's you'll recall if you've listened to that episode or
if you're just familiar with the story. Sir Henry Morton
Stanley was dispatched to Africa to look for the missing
missionary and he was successful in finding Livingstone, and as
a reward for that success, he was commissioned by Belgium's
King Leopold the Seconds, one of the most notorious names
(05:31):
associated with this region in this era. UH was sent
to return to Africa in eighteen seventy one. He had
a directive of exploring the Congo and while he was there,
he and his men spotted some glimpses, but never got
a really good look at a unique creature Yea. At
this point Belgium had a very stronghold on this area,
(05:53):
and so you'll hear Belgium and the Belgian military mentioned
throughout this episode. So a decade and before Sir Henry
Morton Stanley thought he had seen this interesting creature, Philip
Goss had published The Romance of Natural History, in which
the author put forth the idea that Central Africa was
the place where the world's undiscovered species were likely most concentrated.
(06:17):
For European naturalists and explorers, this had given this area
an incredible appeal, and, as the book title suggested, a
degree of romance it is not really a long walk
to suspect that many of them imagine the glory of
traveling to the African continent and discovering again Air quotes
new species and to dovetail on our recent episode on unicorns,
(06:40):
that was one of the animals that Goss had speculated
could be found in Central Africa. It doesn't seem like
Stanley thought he had seen unicorn, but he was curious
about the animal he could never quite see. Stanley would
later write of it in eighteen ninety when he published
a book about his travels titled Darkest Africa. In this book,
(07:02):
he incorrectly identifies the indigenous Booty people as Wombooty but
it's from them that he learned that they were familiar
with these this difficult to spot mammal, writing that they
quote knew a donkey and called it atti. Stanley writes
that the booty would trap these animals, which were herbivores,
(07:25):
in pits on occasion. He also told colleagues that the
near sightings that he had of the atti were in
the area to the west of the Sumliki River. The
next person to enter this story is Wilhelm Yunker. And
Yunker was born in Moscow on April six, eighteen forty
into a German family. His education took him through various cities,
(07:48):
gooding in St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Prague, and then in
eighteen seventy four he traveled to Tunis and followed that
trip up with a trip to Egypt, during which he
made a study of the areas rounding the Nile River
and its tributaries. According to an obituary for Younker that
appeared in the Journal of the American Geographical Society of
New York, quote, it was doctor Yunker's method to make
(08:11):
his way into the region. He wanted to explore and
take up residence among the people for a length of
time learning their language and studying under these exceptional conditions
the ethnology and the natural history of the district. From
eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty six, Younger was in
the Congo and the indigenous people of the region gave
(08:31):
him a piece of animal skin. It was striped, and
the tribe who gave him this skin called the animal
that it came from Makapi. Younker surprisingly didn't think this
was a particularly interesting find. He just thought he had
a piece of a hide from a musk deer. Incidentally,
Younker's trip that he got that hide on lasted much
(08:54):
longer than intended. He had not planned to stay there
for four years, but the Islamic population of su Dan
revolted against the Egyptian led government while he was there,
and in the fighting and counter attacks that followed, Younger
got kind of trapped. He was unable to return to
Europe by just traveling north through the Sudan as he
normally would, and instead he ended up traveling southeast through
(09:16):
modern day Tanzania and made his way to Africa's eastern
coast on the Indian Ocean. That obituary that we just
quoted from states that quote. In eighteen eighty six, the
Russian traveler suddenly appeared at Zanzibar like a man returned
from the dead. He only lived six years after he
returned home from this trip, so he wasn't around quite
(09:37):
long enough to have learned that he had a hide
from an O copy. In eighteen eighty nine, French Army
Captain Jean Baptiste Martian was in Central Africa and kept
a journal of his travels there. He described an animal
that he spotted near the river, and it was, by
his account, beautiful and timid, and it didn't quite look
(09:59):
like any whether he had seen or could find in
existing literature. He thought it was an antelope. So the
next person that we need to introduce, and really uh
to most people, probably the most pivotal in the O
copy story from the Westerner perspective, is Sir Harry Hamilton's Johnston.
He's actually a little bit difficult to discuss because so
(10:20):
much writing about him is pretty a brilliant although he
was a significant player in the expansion of Britain's landholdings
in the Scramble for Africa, which, of course, in many
and I would say most cases had devastating and irreversible
effects for indigenous peoples and cultures. We're going to talk
about that and both his good and bad impacts when
(10:40):
we come back from a quick sponsor break. Johnston was
born in London on June twelft eight and attended Stockwell
Grammar School as a child. Later in his education he
studied language at King's College and then he went to
(11:03):
the Royal Academy to study painting. The obituary for him
that ran in the periodical Nature in seven reads quote
Endowed with great natural ability and with a vigorous and
fearless mind, he soon displayed an amazing versatility which led
him to success along many different paths. Kind of what
I mean when I say all of his writing about
(11:24):
him is pretty crazy. When you see Johnston's list of careers,
it usually includes naturalist, artist, linguist, anthropologist, colonial administrator, and writer.
He wrote dozens of books during his lifetime, many of
which were about Africa. Johnston's first visit to Africa was
to Tunis in eighteen seventy nine. That means he was
(11:45):
in his early twenties when that happened. At this point,
he was gathering specimens painting what he saw and writing
as a journalist, and because he captured images with his
sketch pad for explorers, and because he was able to
communicate with a lot of people with his language skills,
he was soon seen as an experienced explorer in his
(12:06):
own right, and he was receiving assignments to go on
a variety of expeditions. Additionally, of course, that set of skills,
particularly his ability to uh pick up languages that he encountered,
meant that he was the perfect emissary for the British
Empire in the scramble for Africa, and as a colonial
administrator he negotiated a number of agreements that established Britain's
(12:28):
footprint there. One obituary credited him with accumulating four hundred
thousand square miles of territory for the Crown. We mentioned
a moment ago that Jean Baptiste Martian had spotted an
animal that was probably what we came to know as
in a copy. Also in eighteen nine, Johnston was made
the governor of the British Protectorate of Uganda, which had
(12:52):
been established in eighteen four after Britain got involved in
an ongoing battle for control among four religious groups. Three
of those religions were exogenousts. Islam had arrived in the
region in the eighteenth century through trade. Catholicism and Protestantism
spread in the area through missionary expeditions in the nineteenth century,
(13:13):
and then the other was Uganda's native religion. So when
Johnston was appointed to his new post, he reached out
to colleagues with knowledge of the region, including Sir Henry
Morton Stanley, and when the two men spoke about Stanley's
experiences there, that's so called Atti was a significant part
of the conversation. Johnston wanted to learn as much as
(13:34):
he could about this elusive animal and possible new species.
Not long after Johnston assumed this new role, a group
of Bouti were kidnapped by a German or a group
of Germans, who intended to take them to France and
exhibit them at the Paris Exposition. The details of this
(13:54):
entire situation are always a little vague, but the kidnappers
and their victims fled to Ganda. There they were intercepted
by Belgian forces, who reached out to Johnston to escort
the captured men back to the Atturi forest where they lived.
This is bringing a story to mind of another man
who was exhibited at a World's fair and whose life
(14:17):
ended tragically and suicide. That was Ota Benga, who was
kidnapped and sold to businessman Samuel Phillips Burner in nineteen
o four. Although Ota Benga was also Booty, his kidnapping
took place several years after the events were talking about here.
While Johnston was with them Booty, he took the opportunity
(14:39):
to ask them about that animal called the Attie that
Henry Morton Stanley had told him about from them Booty Man.
He learned that they didn't call it atti but oapi.
It's like a copy. But there's uh an apostrophe where
the k would go. Given how far off Stanley was
on the name of the tribe, this mistake about the
(14:59):
name is not really very surprising. The Mabooty described it
as an animal similar to a donkey, but with stripes,
and this led Johnston, like many people today, to assume
that it might be a species of forest inhabiting zebra.
Johnston had stopped on route to his mission to return
the men home to the fort held by Belgian forces,
(15:19):
which was called Fort Benny, and he asked the commander
of the fort if he had seen this animal that
looked like a striped donkey. It turned out that he had.
They had a skin of one of them at the fort,
but it had been cut up to make bandaliers and belts,
so Johnston couldn't see the hide in its entirety. He
was given to bandaliers to keep, though, and he also
(15:42):
learned yet another name for this animal that was used
by indigenous people to the area, that was a copy.
Johnston decided that they should have a little side quest
and mountain expedition immediately to try to find this mysterious animal.
According to accounts written by white witnesses, the Mabooty served
as his guides, and they were able to point out
(16:02):
the places O copy had been in the forest, although
no sighting happened on this trip. Johnston was surprised to
see that the tracks that he had been shown by
them Booty were made by a cloven hoof animal, not
one with a single hoof like you would see on
a horse or a zebra, and that made Johnston worried
that this whole thing may have been some sort of
(16:22):
deception on the part of his guides, because all of
the other information that he had seen or read indicated
that this was some kind of zebra like animal. The
expedition was cut short when a malaria outbreak started in
the travel party. They made their way back to Uganda
thanks to a Belgian military escort, and Johnston was openly disappointed,
(16:44):
and having not seen in a copy, he sent the
bandaliers made with the animal's skin to London so an
expert could analyze them, and that expert was Dr Philip
Letley Sclater, who was secretary of the Zoological Society of London.
Sclater's path to zoology had been kind of a zigzagging one.
He was born in eighteen twenty nine and his academic
(17:06):
focus at Corpus Christie College, Oxford had been mathematics, in
which he excelled apparently, but then as a career it
seemed he was destined for a life in law. He
became a barrister and member of the Honorable Society of
Lincoln's Inn in eighteen fifty five, and when Philip was
in his mid forties, his brother, George Sclater Booth became
(17:26):
president of the local Government Board and Philip became his
private secretary. Through all of that, though Philip had been
interested in zoology and had studied it as sort of
a serious hobby. He became the Zoological Society's secretary in
eighteen fifty nine, forty one years before he received the
parcel containing those copy skin bandaliers, so he had been
(17:49):
in that post a long time, and yet he was
as confused as anybody else about these skins. When he
examined them, he found that the hair on the hide
was similar to of a zebra or a giraffe, but
he thought it was too dissimilar from an antelope for
it to be a relative. Later shared the samples with
other members of the Zoological Society and a meeting in
(18:12):
mid December nineteen hundred and soon London was just a
buzz with the possibility that a new mammal had been discovered,
and though papers picked up the story, there was still
not a whole lot to go on. Nobody knew what
this was, so the write ups were largely quite speculative
and walked through the possibilities of it being some sort
(18:33):
of new species of zebra or, despite evidence to the contrary,
some kind of antelope. Mostly, the journalism coverage of this
alleged find just emphasized how eager people were to actually
see whatever it was. Even though there was no specimen
on hand. The hide samples from the bandaliers were enough
(18:53):
for the Zoological Society to declare that Johnston had indeed
found a new species, and on February first, nineteen o one,
they named it Equist Johnstoney. That equist meant that they
believed it to be a member of the genus equity,
that's the same one shared by horses and zebras. Johnston
(19:13):
was still in Uganda when this happened, and he had
not seen one of the animals either. I like this
idea that he discovered a new species without ever having
seen what it was. Um When Johnston had to cut
his active search short due to that malaria outbreak, a
Belgian officer named Merra had promised Johnston that his men
(19:34):
would capture one of these animals and send him an
intact high to study. But then that officer Merra died
from a complication from malaria himself not long after that
promise was made. However, another officer from Fort mcbenny made
good on the promise. By April nineteen o one, Johnston
had a skin and two skulls, as well as a
(19:56):
very detailed written description of the animal. And was the
skulls that made Johnston realize that the animal he had
been pursuing was not a close relative of the horse
or the zebra as it had been presumed up to
that point. It was at this point that the connection
was made to the giraffe family, so Johnston sent the
new hide and skulls along to the Zoological Society. He
(20:19):
also provided a watercolor of the animal for additional visual reference.
That watercolor was still speculative, though, because Johnston still hadn't
seen a living a copy. He also included a letter
with all the information he had gathered and his conclusions
about the animals likely genus. We're going to talk about
how things unfolded after Johnston's new specimens got to London,
(20:43):
after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. All of the materials that
Johnston had sent to London were shared at a meeting
of the Zoological Society on May seventh, n one. And
(21:04):
while this was a pretty exciting moment for the Society,
a month later their meeting was even more thrilling because
Harry Johnson had returned from Africa and he was in
attendance to lecture on the find himself, and during this
lecture he proposed that this new species be given the
scientific name Helidotherium tigrunum. Heleidotherium is an extinct genus related
(21:26):
to giraffo day and tigerunum means striped like a tiger.
An article ran in The Times titled a new mammal
and it opened with the line quote the helodothere in
is alive in the congo free state. An article about
Johnston's quote discovery ran in multiple papers throughout the US
under the headline newly discovered beast of the congo forests,
(21:49):
and it talked about the quote absolutely new type of
existing animal that was alleged to be quote a living
representative of a lost form. All of this press around
Johnston's new animal set off a frenzy. Everyone has seemed
wanted to be the first to capture a live o copy,
(22:10):
and within just a few years, expeditions sent from various
European and US museums had grown so numerous that the
Belgian government put a licensing and permit system in place
to try to control the number of people just prowling
the Aturi forest looking for a copy. The following year,
more samples arrived in Europe from the Atturi forest, this
(22:30):
time sent to Brussels by a Belgian officer. The parcel
included two skins and a complete skeleton. A zoologist named
Charles Emmanuel Forsyth Major traveled to Brussels to examine the
skeleton and the hides and determined that the Belgian officer
had actually found a different species of animal from the
(22:51):
one that Johnston's samples had been from. He was incorrect,
but did not know that, and named this new species
Ocopia labrecti. Yet another alleged different Ocopy species was discovered
in n three, again discovered is not really accurate, when
yet another skin landed in London. This one was named
(23:13):
in honor of the man who had first obtained the
full skin and skull samples for Johnston, whose name was Ericsson.
So this species, again incorrectly identified as different from the
other two, was called Okapia eric Sony. But as all
of these samples continued to be examined and analyzed, naturalists
realized they were not actually different enough to be different species.
(23:37):
Part of the issue had stemmed from the skins not
having any evidence of the animals sexes. Intact, different people
had prepared each skin, and though this work was all
done by indigenous people's, they didn't all prepare skins in
the exact same way. So a lot of the variances
that had been noted as evidence of a different species
(24:00):
were really just that they were the results of sex
or age difference. So it s got back to just
the one species. I love how there was this explosion
of excitement of three anyway, I don't know, just the one.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Whoops that one was just older
and male and prepared by a different person. Yes, that
just had a different tanning situation going on. Meanwhile, there
(24:24):
were still ongoing efforts just to capture one of these.
The Belgian government tasked its military post in the Congo
to prioritize the capture of an O copy. One of
the first efforts did not go entirely according to plan.
A Belgian lieutenant named and Zelius was able to get
six skins, but he also shot an O copy instead
(24:45):
of bringing it in alive. That made him the first
European to kill one. By nine O three Belgian officials
had captured alive a copy, but it escaped before they
could arrange to transport it to Europe. In nineteen o nine,
a group from the US, with funding from the American
Museum of Natural History and the New York Zoological Society,
started a planned five year expedition to collect specimens from
(25:09):
the Congo and specifically from the Attori Forest. On their
very lengthy wish list was on a copy for the
rules regarding expeditions that the Belgian government had sent. Again,
Belgium was in control of the area, this team, headed
by mammalogist Herbert Lang, had to be escorted by Belgian soldiers.
(25:31):
This group did find an indigenous tribe eating a copy,
and from them they learned that the animal was highly
regarded and that were there were a lot of rules
and social customs regarding the animal's value and how one
could and could not be killed in accordance with tradition,
who was worthy in the social structure to even sit
on a hide, and what powers one might gain according
(25:53):
to their belief system while wearing the animals skin. There
is a lot of this story relayed through the accounts
of the expedition and not the indigenous people's about what
they learned of the Bantu people they encountered. There they
are specifically mentioned as Bantu, And keep in mind that
the word Bantu is an umbrella term that was coined
by William hi Bleak in the eighteen fifties. It is
(26:17):
not an identifier that anybody that white people would call
Bantu would use, and there is no real cultural group
that it refers to. So keep in mind we are
working with accounts that use an outdated and fallacious identifier
for the people being described, So that puts the entire
account in a bit of a precarious place in terms
of accepting it at face value. So Lang's account indicates
(26:41):
that he was able to gain the trust of the
tribe by sending the Belgian soldiers away to their garrison
and the negotiating so he could have their help in
finding on a copy. Lang was humble enough to recognize
that he did not know what he was doing, writing
that anyone from outside of the area who had seen
or shot in a copy had only been very lucky
(27:02):
and not skilled. A member of the Azande people was
able to capture an o copy calf for Lang, but
Lang did not successfully keep it alive. That challenge of
keeping an O copy in good health would plague numerous
similar efforts. They just had very poor understanding of the
(27:23):
animal's nutritional needs. Add to that the peril of shipping
a live wild animal, which involves traveling by truck and
by boat, often with inexperienced people handling the animal or
its crate at various points along the way. It becomes
clear that only an extremely hearty animal could have survived
(27:44):
all of this. When Lange's expedition returned to New York
six and a half years after it left, the men
brought back literally thousands of specimens of plants and animals,
but no O copy. It actually took several more years
for an O copy to make it to Europe alive.
The first one was a calf named Boutta, who was
(28:05):
sent to the Antwerp Zoo after being hand raised by
the wife of the district commissioner of Bozuele Andre Jacques Landegum.
The animal only survived seven weeks after it got to Europe.
Another copy, named tele was shipped to the Antwerp Zoo
nine years later. In nine Taile lived in captivity for
fifteen years and She might have lived longer, but she
(28:28):
died of starvation in nineteen forty three. During World War Two,
when many European zoos were left damaged from bombing or
poorly attended during Nazi occupation, attempts to capture a copy
continued as other zoos tried to get their own animals
and people made so many mistakes. This really quickly evidence
(28:48):
is how having an animal was prioritized over the welfare
of those animals. In ninety eight, Camp Putnam was established
on the Ippulu River and over time time it became
an O copy capture station. By the late nineteen forties,
the people who had taken over the management of Camp Putnam,
which or Carl and Rosemary Rough, had gained experience that
(29:12):
capture and care, and over the next forty years they
exported almost seventy O copy to zoos in Europe and
North America. Survival rates remained really low, though the animals
often fell into ill health along the journey or shortly
after they arrived at their destination. Parasitic infections in particular,
(29:33):
did a lot of damage to these very stressed animals. Yeah,
basically these were parasites that they had had most likely
in their natural habitat, but because their immune system was
so completely debilitated by all of this stress and movement,
they just couldn't fight them off the way they normally
would have. North America's first A Copy arrived in nineteen
(29:55):
thirty seven and it became part of the animal collection
at the Bronx Zoo. Over time, time deforestation, mining and
the illegal hunting of O Copy because they are now
protected by Congolese law, these have led to declining numbers
in the wild, and the International Union for Conservation of
Nature or i u c IN, has declared the copy
(30:15):
an endangered species. The Institute in Congo for the Conservation
of Nature and the i u c IN SSC GIRAFFEO
Copy Specialist Group work together to lead conservation efforts in
the Democratic Republic of Congo established the O Copy Wildlife Reserve.
(30:35):
It is very difficult to get a count on a
Copy in the wild because they are very shy and
they are very good at avoiding people, and their natural
camouflage works very well. The current estimates that we have
are nearly a decade old because of that, but according
to the O Copy Conservation Project, they're an estimated three
thousand to thirty five hundred okopy on the Ocopy Wildlife
(30:58):
Reserve and somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand total
on Earth. In a twist, all those initially clumsy efforts
to procure a copy for zoos have actually led to
the development of a significant avenue for conservation of the species.
In seven Europe started the first captive breeding programs, and
(31:20):
the Antwerp Zoo, the first to have received an a
copy from Africa, is now a leader in that effort.
A lot of zoo programs also include institute support for
conservation efforts in the wild. As of last year, there
were almost two hundred copy in captivity and captivity breeding
programs have become an important part of the conservation effort
(31:42):
creating an assurance population. The goal is to reach two
hundred seventy animals and such facilities to ensure a genetically
healthy captive population, and since October eighteenth has been World
O Copy Day. Just one when. All of these conservation
groups usually share a lot of information and try to
(32:05):
help raise awareness and knowledge about them among the general population.
For listener, mail, I have a yummy one related to
our recent Accidental Inventions episode. This is from our listener, Becca,
who writes Dear Holly and Tracy. Hi, I'm Becca. I
started listening to the podcast about a year ago, but
have only started listening frequently during the spring break. I
am on right now. I was listening to the Accidental
(32:29):
Inventions episode earlier today while on a walk, and I
wanted to share some personal knowledge slash a story with you.
You were right. Nuts are in the recipe on the
back of chocolate morsel bags, although you can omit them,
which I do, which is the correct thing to do
in my opinion. I made a little cheering gesture because
I'm glad I remembered rightly. I felt vindicated. I've become
(32:51):
a bit of an expert on making these cookies, as
I baked them about six times within the first six
months of quarantine back in I still make them frequently,
as well as chocolate white chocolate chip cookies, both of
which are big crowd pleasers with my family and my
friends at school. I mean cookies a lot when we
had full day rehearsals for a play I was in,
and the cast always got excited when I said I
brought cookies to the lunch break. Your podcast is awesome
(33:13):
and I'm often up past midnight listening to it. And
like I said, when I'm on Walks, y'all are awesome
and I'm definitely going to keep listening to the podcast.
Hope you'll stay safe during these uncertain times, Becca. She
also sent a very beautiful picture of her cat, Angelo,
who she has had almost her whole life. And he
is a very mellow, cuddly cat. Um so cute, so cute. Um. Listen.
(33:38):
I'm a sucker for kitties, It's no secret, and this
one looks very cuddly indeed and precious. Um. I. I I
also love that Becca mentioned that she makes cookies and
brings them to her rehearsals. I am a big fan.
I'm just gonna put this out there in case anyone
has ever wondered bringing baked goods where you go pretty
(33:58):
lar for things that are like service situations is the
best way to win friends and influence people there is
on the earth. I brought brownies to my dentist recently
and he was so thankful, and I feel like I
get a plus service. I brought donuts to my tattoo
artists recently. I didn't handbake those, but listen if you
want to make somebody's day, bring something delicious wherever you go,
(34:21):
and everyone won't want to be your pal. This is
the secret I give unto you. If you did not
already know it, go forth, um, make more friends, get
great service wherever you go. And also just because you
want to take care of people. That's my usual impetus
is like I just want to make somebody's day easier
or nicer, delightful. Baked good will do it. Hi, ho,
I'm on it. Uh you would like to write to
(34:44):
us and share your baked good information or just whatever
is going on it's pertinent or not to the podcast.
You can do that a history podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also check out our social media
which is pretty much everywhere as Missed in History and
you can subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done
that yet, that's easiest. Pie on the I heart radio
app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff
(35:12):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. I have
wanted to do this episode for a long time. I know,
(00:22):
I think I've mentioned it to you like four times
over the last several years at least. UM. So, if
you visit any zoo or facility that has a copy
in their collection, you will often hear or see the
information that this animal was discovered by the Western world
in the early twentieth century. And we have two very
hard air quote that discovery, because of course indigenous populations
(00:45):
have known about them for a long time. We will
talk about how important this animal is to the area
where it naturally lives. Um. And every time I hear that,
I kind of want to stand up and tell everyone
they're like all of the other tourists that there were
certainly people who lived in Africa who knew about the copy,
But I also don't want to be that disruptive. They
probably wouldn't welcome that on the little Safari ride. Um.
(01:07):
And most of the time there will have actually been
some mention or phrase that indicates that no no, that
was just to the Western world. But I also know
that in scenarios like that, people miss nuance and I worry.
So today we will talk about how a series of
efforts on the parts of various European explorers brought this
animal to the attention of the European naturalist community. Again
(01:30):
not a discovery. UM, this is one where I, you know,
often will do ones where it's like, oh, acute animal.
Oh no, horrible things. UM. I knew the horrible things
were there, So there were no surprises in that regard.
But we should of course let people know that. Um,
sometimes in the quest to collect animal specimens, particularly when
(01:53):
you don't know anything about that animal, people are ding
dongs and so there is some sad animal stuff in
this and yeah, so just know that going in it
was also happening concurrently with some horrific things imposed onto
the people of the region by Europeans. That's totally outside
(02:14):
the scope of this episode. Yes, I mean, we kind
of hint at it to give the shape of what
was going on, right, but we don't we don't get
deep into all of the politicking that was going on
in the We mentioned the land grabbing, but we're not
going super deep into all of that. You see the
rails of it. As we're telling the story O copy
(02:35):
of John Stoney, we'll talk about that name. And a
bit is a mammal. It has a primarily russet red
body with striped flanks, and because of those distinctive stripes,
people often assume, particularly lay people, that this must be
related to the zebra. It's actually in the same family
as the giraffe. It's roughly the same size as a horse,
(02:56):
standing about five ft at the shoulder and six ft
at the head, so it's at the under two ms.
The main natural habitat for the okapi is the Autouri forest,
which is a tropical rainforest in what is the Democratic
Republic of Congo today, and this forest area is in
a northeastern section of the Congo River basin in the
equatorial region, kind of right in the middle of Africa.
(03:19):
The climate in this area is actually pretty consistent throughout
the year, with two rainy seasons, and the temperature is
likely much milder than you may expect. The average temperature
is seventy five point nine degrees fahrenheit, with highs and
lows of seventy degrees and ninety degrees. If you do
your temperature and celsius, that's an average of twenty four
(03:39):
point four degrees, a low of twenty one point one,
and a high of thirty two point two. That sounds
pretty lovely to me. Um The Atouri Forest is home
to all kinds of animals, of course, in addition to
the Okapi, including birds, monkeys, chimpanzees, bush babies, bongos, pangolins, elephants,
all kinds of insects, a mix of diurnal and nocturnal species.
(04:03):
It is the most bio diverse area of Africa. The
copy are believed to have existed for six or seven
million years. This animal is also the symbol of the
Congo and images of a copy appear on the country's
bank notes, even on their military uniforms and talk. John Lucas,
founder and president of the O Copy Conservation Project, said, quote,
(04:27):
you don't have to go up to anybody in Congo
and explain what an O copy is. No everywhere else
but not there, which is an indicator too of how
long it has just been part of the culture there.
But to tell the story of how the Western world
learned of the O copy, we have to start with
a pretty familiar name, and that is Dr David Livingstone.
(04:48):
There is an entire episode in the archives about him
from previous host Sarah and Deblinus, so we won't rehash
his entire story. The important thing here is that he
went to Africa, and because he got himself lost UH,
he becomes the first, although very minor, link in the
chain of how the Western world learned about this animal.
(05:09):
How's you'll recall if you've listened to that episode or
if you're just familiar with the story. Sir Henry Morton
Stanley was dispatched to Africa to look for the missing
missionary and he was successful in finding Livingstone, and as
a reward for that success, he was commissioned by Belgium's
King Leopold the Seconds, one of the most notorious names
(05:31):
associated with this region in this era. UH was sent
to return to Africa in eighteen seventy one. He had
a directive of exploring the Congo and while he was there,
he and his men spotted some glimpses, but never got
a really good look at a unique creature Yea. At
this point Belgium had a very stronghold on this area,
(05:53):
and so you'll hear Belgium and the Belgian military mentioned
throughout this episode. So a decade and before Sir Henry
Morton Stanley thought he had seen this interesting creature, Philip
Goss had published The Romance of Natural History, in which
the author put forth the idea that Central Africa was
the place where the world's undiscovered species were likely most concentrated.
(06:17):
For European naturalists and explorers, this had given this area
an incredible appeal, and, as the book title suggested, a
degree of romance it is not really a long walk
to suspect that many of them imagine the glory of
traveling to the African continent and discovering again Air quotes
new species and to dovetail on our recent episode on unicorns,
(06:40):
that was one of the animals that Goss had speculated
could be found in Central Africa. It doesn't seem like
Stanley thought he had seen unicorn, but he was curious
about the animal he could never quite see. Stanley would
later write of it in eighteen ninety when he published
a book about his travels titled Darkest Africa. In this book,
(07:02):
he incorrectly identifies the indigenous Booty people as Wombooty but
it's from them that he learned that they were familiar
with these this difficult to spot mammal, writing that they
quote knew a donkey and called it atti. Stanley writes
that the booty would trap these animals, which were herbivores,
(07:25):
in pits on occasion. He also told colleagues that the
near sightings that he had of the atti were in
the area to the west of the Sumliki River. The
next person to enter this story is Wilhelm Yunker. And
Yunker was born in Moscow on April six, eighteen forty
into a German family. His education took him through various cities,
(07:48):
gooding in St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Prague, and then in
eighteen seventy four he traveled to Tunis and followed that
trip up with a trip to Egypt, during which he
made a study of the areas rounding the Nile River
and its tributaries. According to an obituary for Younker that
appeared in the Journal of the American Geographical Society of
New York, quote, it was doctor Yunker's method to make
(08:11):
his way into the region. He wanted to explore and
take up residence among the people for a length of
time learning their language and studying under these exceptional conditions
the ethnology and the natural history of the district. From
eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty six, Younger was in
the Congo and the indigenous people of the region gave
(08:31):
him a piece of animal skin. It was striped, and
the tribe who gave him this skin called the animal
that it came from Makapi. Younker surprisingly didn't think this
was a particularly interesting find. He just thought he had
a piece of a hide from a musk deer. Incidentally,
Younker's trip that he got that hide on lasted much
(08:54):
longer than intended. He had not planned to stay there
for four years, but the Islamic population of su Dan
revolted against the Egyptian led government while he was there,
and in the fighting and counter attacks that followed, Younger
got kind of trapped. He was unable to return to
Europe by just traveling north through the Sudan as he
normally would, and instead he ended up traveling southeast through
(09:16):
modern day Tanzania and made his way to Africa's eastern
coast on the Indian Ocean. That obituary that we just
quoted from states that quote. In eighteen eighty six, the
Russian traveler suddenly appeared at Zanzibar like a man returned
from the dead. He only lived six years after he
returned home from this trip, so he wasn't around quite
(09:37):
long enough to have learned that he had a hide
from an O copy. In eighteen eighty nine, French Army
Captain Jean Baptiste Martian was in Central Africa and kept
a journal of his travels there. He described an animal
that he spotted near the river, and it was, by
his account, beautiful and timid, and it didn't quite look
(09:59):
like any whether he had seen or could find in
existing literature. He thought it was an antelope. So the
next person that we need to introduce, and really uh
to most people, probably the most pivotal in the O
copy story from the Westerner perspective, is Sir Harry Hamilton's Johnston.
He's actually a little bit difficult to discuss because so
(10:20):
much writing about him is pretty a brilliant although he
was a significant player in the expansion of Britain's landholdings
in the Scramble for Africa, which, of course, in many
and I would say most cases had devastating and irreversible
effects for indigenous peoples and cultures. We're going to talk
about that and both his good and bad impacts when
(10:40):
we come back from a quick sponsor break. Johnston was
born in London on June twelft eight and attended Stockwell
Grammar School as a child. Later in his education he
studied language at King's College and then he went to
(11:03):
the Royal Academy to study painting. The obituary for him
that ran in the periodical Nature in seven reads quote
Endowed with great natural ability and with a vigorous and
fearless mind, he soon displayed an amazing versatility which led
him to success along many different paths. Kind of what
I mean when I say all of his writing about
(11:24):
him is pretty crazy. When you see Johnston's list of careers,
it usually includes naturalist, artist, linguist, anthropologist, colonial administrator, and writer.
He wrote dozens of books during his lifetime, many of
which were about Africa. Johnston's first visit to Africa was
to Tunis in eighteen seventy nine. That means he was
(11:45):
in his early twenties when that happened. At this point,
he was gathering specimens painting what he saw and writing
as a journalist, and because he captured images with his
sketch pad for explorers, and because he was able to
communicate with a lot of people with his language skills,
he was soon seen as an experienced explorer in his
(12:06):
own right, and he was receiving assignments to go on
a variety of expeditions. Additionally, of course, that set of skills,
particularly his ability to uh pick up languages that he encountered,
meant that he was the perfect emissary for the British
Empire in the scramble for Africa, and as a colonial
administrator he negotiated a number of agreements that established Britain's
(12:28):
footprint there. One obituary credited him with accumulating four hundred
thousand square miles of territory for the Crown. We mentioned
a moment ago that Jean Baptiste Martian had spotted an
animal that was probably what we came to know as
in a copy. Also in eighteen nine, Johnston was made
the governor of the British Protectorate of Uganda, which had
(12:52):
been established in eighteen four after Britain got involved in
an ongoing battle for control among four religious groups. Three
of those religions were exogenousts. Islam had arrived in the
region in the eighteenth century through trade. Catholicism and Protestantism
spread in the area through missionary expeditions in the nineteenth century,
(13:13):
and then the other was Uganda's native religion. So when
Johnston was appointed to his new post, he reached out
to colleagues with knowledge of the region, including Sir Henry
Morton Stanley, and when the two men spoke about Stanley's
experiences there, that's so called Atti was a significant part
of the conversation. Johnston wanted to learn as much as
(13:34):
he could about this elusive animal and possible new species.
Not long after Johnston assumed this new role, a group
of Bouti were kidnapped by a German or a group
of Germans, who intended to take them to France and
exhibit them at the Paris Exposition. The details of this
(13:54):
entire situation are always a little vague, but the kidnappers
and their victims fled to Ganda. There they were intercepted
by Belgian forces, who reached out to Johnston to escort
the captured men back to the Atturi forest where they lived.
This is bringing a story to mind of another man
who was exhibited at a World's fair and whose life
(14:17):
ended tragically and suicide. That was Ota Benga, who was
kidnapped and sold to businessman Samuel Phillips Burner in nineteen
o four. Although Ota Benga was also Booty, his kidnapping
took place several years after the events were talking about here.
While Johnston was with them Booty, he took the opportunity
(14:39):
to ask them about that animal called the Attie that
Henry Morton Stanley had told him about from them Booty Man.
He learned that they didn't call it atti but oapi.
It's like a copy. But there's uh an apostrophe where
the k would go. Given how far off Stanley was
on the name of the tribe, this mistake about the
(14:59):
name is not really very surprising. The Mabooty described it
as an animal similar to a donkey, but with stripes,
and this led Johnston, like many people today, to assume
that it might be a species of forest inhabiting zebra.
Johnston had stopped on route to his mission to return
the men home to the fort held by Belgian forces,
(15:19):
which was called Fort Benny, and he asked the commander
of the fort if he had seen this animal that
looked like a striped donkey. It turned out that he had.
They had a skin of one of them at the fort,
but it had been cut up to make bandaliers and belts,
so Johnston couldn't see the hide in its entirety. He
was given to bandaliers to keep, though, and he also
(15:42):
learned yet another name for this animal that was used
by indigenous people to the area, that was a copy.
Johnston decided that they should have a little side quest
and mountain expedition immediately to try to find this mysterious animal.
According to accounts written by white witnesses, the Mabooty served
as his guides, and they were able to point out
(16:02):
the places O copy had been in the forest, although
no sighting happened on this trip. Johnston was surprised to
see that the tracks that he had been shown by
them Booty were made by a cloven hoof animal, not
one with a single hoof like you would see on
a horse or a zebra, and that made Johnston worried
that this whole thing may have been some sort of
(16:22):
deception on the part of his guides, because all of
the other information that he had seen or read indicated
that this was some kind of zebra like animal. The
expedition was cut short when a malaria outbreak started in
the travel party. They made their way back to Uganda
thanks to a Belgian military escort, and Johnston was openly disappointed,
(16:44):
and having not seen in a copy, he sent the
bandaliers made with the animal's skin to London so an
expert could analyze them, and that expert was Dr Philip
Letley Sclater, who was secretary of the Zoological Society of London.
Sclater's path to zoology had been kind of a zigzagging one.
He was born in eighteen twenty nine and his academic
(17:06):
focus at Corpus Christie College, Oxford had been mathematics, in
which he excelled apparently, but then as a career it
seemed he was destined for a life in law. He
became a barrister and member of the Honorable Society of
Lincoln's Inn in eighteen fifty five, and when Philip was
in his mid forties, his brother, George Sclater Booth became
(17:26):
president of the local Government Board and Philip became his
private secretary. Through all of that, though Philip had been
interested in zoology and had studied it as sort of
a serious hobby. He became the Zoological Society's secretary in
eighteen fifty nine, forty one years before he received the
parcel containing those copy skin bandaliers, so he had been
(17:49):
in that post a long time, and yet he was
as confused as anybody else about these skins. When he
examined them, he found that the hair on the hide
was similar to of a zebra or a giraffe, but
he thought it was too dissimilar from an antelope for
it to be a relative. Later shared the samples with
other members of the Zoological Society and a meeting in
(18:12):
mid December nineteen hundred and soon London was just a
buzz with the possibility that a new mammal had been discovered,
and though papers picked up the story, there was still
not a whole lot to go on. Nobody knew what
this was, so the write ups were largely quite speculative
and walked through the possibilities of it being some sort
(18:33):
of new species of zebra or, despite evidence to the contrary,
some kind of antelope. Mostly, the journalism coverage of this
alleged find just emphasized how eager people were to actually
see whatever it was. Even though there was no specimen
on hand. The hide samples from the bandaliers were enough
(18:53):
for the Zoological Society to declare that Johnston had indeed
found a new species, and on February first, nineteen o one,
they named it Equist Johnstoney. That equist meant that they
believed it to be a member of the genus equity,
that's the same one shared by horses and zebras. Johnston
(19:13):
was still in Uganda when this happened, and he had
not seen one of the animals either. I like this
idea that he discovered a new species without ever having
seen what it was. Um When Johnston had to cut
his active search short due to that malaria outbreak, a
Belgian officer named Merra had promised Johnston that his men
(19:34):
would capture one of these animals and send him an
intact high to study. But then that officer Merra died
from a complication from malaria himself not long after that
promise was made. However, another officer from Fort mcbenny made
good on the promise. By April nineteen o one, Johnston
had a skin and two skulls, as well as a
(19:56):
very detailed written description of the animal. And was the
skulls that made Johnston realize that the animal he had
been pursuing was not a close relative of the horse
or the zebra as it had been presumed up to
that point. It was at this point that the connection
was made to the giraffe family, so Johnston sent the
new hide and skulls along to the Zoological Society. He
(20:19):
also provided a watercolor of the animal for additional visual reference.
That watercolor was still speculative, though, because Johnston still hadn't
seen a living a copy. He also included a letter
with all the information he had gathered and his conclusions
about the animals likely genus. We're going to talk about
how things unfolded after Johnston's new specimens got to London,
(20:43):
after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. All of the materials that
Johnston had sent to London were shared at a meeting
of the Zoological Society on May seventh, n one. And
(21:04):
while this was a pretty exciting moment for the Society,
a month later their meeting was even more thrilling because
Harry Johnson had returned from Africa and he was in
attendance to lecture on the find himself, and during this
lecture he proposed that this new species be given the
scientific name Helidotherium tigrunum. Heleidotherium is an extinct genus related
(21:26):
to giraffo day and tigerunum means striped like a tiger.
An article ran in The Times titled a new mammal
and it opened with the line quote the helodothere in
is alive in the congo free state. An article about
Johnston's quote discovery ran in multiple papers throughout the US
under the headline newly discovered beast of the congo forests,
(21:49):
and it talked about the quote absolutely new type of
existing animal that was alleged to be quote a living
representative of a lost form. All of this press around
Johnston's new animal set off a frenzy. Everyone has seemed
wanted to be the first to capture a live o copy,
(22:10):
and within just a few years, expeditions sent from various
European and US museums had grown so numerous that the
Belgian government put a licensing and permit system in place
to try to control the number of people just prowling
the Aturi forest looking for a copy. The following year,
more samples arrived in Europe from the Atturi forest, this
(22:30):
time sent to Brussels by a Belgian officer. The parcel
included two skins and a complete skeleton. A zoologist named
Charles Emmanuel Forsyth Major traveled to Brussels to examine the
skeleton and the hides and determined that the Belgian officer
had actually found a different species of animal from the
(22:51):
one that Johnston's samples had been from. He was incorrect,
but did not know that, and named this new species
Ocopia labrecti. Yet another alleged different Ocopy species was discovered
in n three, again discovered is not really accurate, when
yet another skin landed in London. This one was named
(23:13):
in honor of the man who had first obtained the
full skin and skull samples for Johnston, whose name was Ericsson.
So this species, again incorrectly identified as different from the
other two, was called Okapia eric Sony. But as all
of these samples continued to be examined and analyzed, naturalists
realized they were not actually different enough to be different species.
(23:37):
Part of the issue had stemmed from the skins not
having any evidence of the animals sexes. Intact, different people
had prepared each skin, and though this work was all
done by indigenous people's, they didn't all prepare skins in
the exact same way. So a lot of the variances
that had been noted as evidence of a different species
(24:00):
were really just that they were the results of sex
or age difference. So it s got back to just
the one species. I love how there was this explosion
of excitement of three anyway, I don't know, just the one.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Whoops that one was just older
and male and prepared by a different person. Yes, that
just had a different tanning situation going on. Meanwhile, there
(24:24):
were still ongoing efforts just to capture one of these.
The Belgian government tasked its military post in the Congo
to prioritize the capture of an O copy. One of
the first efforts did not go entirely according to plan.
A Belgian lieutenant named and Zelius was able to get
six skins, but he also shot an O copy instead
(24:45):
of bringing it in alive. That made him the first
European to kill one. By nine O three Belgian officials
had captured alive a copy, but it escaped before they
could arrange to transport it to Europe. In nineteen o nine,
a group from the US, with funding from the American
Museum of Natural History and the New York Zoological Society,
started a planned five year expedition to collect specimens from
(25:09):
the Congo and specifically from the Attori Forest. On their
very lengthy wish list was on a copy for the
rules regarding expeditions that the Belgian government had sent. Again,
Belgium was in control of the area, this team, headed
by mammalogist Herbert Lang, had to be escorted by Belgian soldiers.
(25:31):
This group did find an indigenous tribe eating a copy,
and from them they learned that the animal was highly
regarded and that were there were a lot of rules
and social customs regarding the animal's value and how one
could and could not be killed in accordance with tradition,
who was worthy in the social structure to even sit
on a hide, and what powers one might gain according
(25:53):
to their belief system while wearing the animals skin. There
is a lot of this story relayed through the accounts
of the expedition and not the indigenous people's about what
they learned of the Bantu people they encountered. There they
are specifically mentioned as Bantu, And keep in mind that
the word Bantu is an umbrella term that was coined
by William hi Bleak in the eighteen fifties. It is
(26:17):
not an identifier that anybody that white people would call
Bantu would use, and there is no real cultural group
that it refers to. So keep in mind we are
working with accounts that use an outdated and fallacious identifier
for the people being described, So that puts the entire
account in a bit of a precarious place in terms
of accepting it at face value. So Lang's account indicates
(26:41):
that he was able to gain the trust of the
tribe by sending the Belgian soldiers away to their garrison
and the negotiating so he could have their help in
finding on a copy. Lang was humble enough to recognize
that he did not know what he was doing, writing
that anyone from outside of the area who had seen
or shot in a copy had only been very lucky
(27:02):
and not skilled. A member of the Azande people was
able to capture an o copy calf for Lang, but
Lang did not successfully keep it alive. That challenge of
keeping an O copy in good health would plague numerous
similar efforts. They just had very poor understanding of the
(27:23):
animal's nutritional needs. Add to that the peril of shipping
a live wild animal, which involves traveling by truck and
by boat, often with inexperienced people handling the animal or
its crate at various points along the way. It becomes
clear that only an extremely hearty animal could have survived
(27:44):
all of this. When Lange's expedition returned to New York
six and a half years after it left, the men
brought back literally thousands of specimens of plants and animals,
but no O copy. It actually took several more years
for an O copy to make it to Europe alive.
The first one was a calf named Boutta, who was
(28:05):
sent to the Antwerp Zoo after being hand raised by
the wife of the district commissioner of Bozuele Andre Jacques Landegum.
The animal only survived seven weeks after it got to Europe.
Another copy, named tele was shipped to the Antwerp Zoo
nine years later. In nine Taile lived in captivity for
fifteen years and She might have lived longer, but she
(28:28):
died of starvation in nineteen forty three. During World War Two,
when many European zoos were left damaged from bombing or
poorly attended during Nazi occupation, attempts to capture a copy
continued as other zoos tried to get their own animals
and people made so many mistakes. This really quickly evidence
(28:48):
is how having an animal was prioritized over the welfare
of those animals. In ninety eight, Camp Putnam was established
on the Ippulu River and over time time it became
an O copy capture station. By the late nineteen forties,
the people who had taken over the management of Camp Putnam,
which or Carl and Rosemary Rough, had gained experience that
(29:12):
capture and care, and over the next forty years they
exported almost seventy O copy to zoos in Europe and
North America. Survival rates remained really low, though the animals
often fell into ill health along the journey or shortly
after they arrived at their destination. Parasitic infections in particular,
(29:33):
did a lot of damage to these very stressed animals. Yeah,
basically these were parasites that they had had most likely
in their natural habitat, but because their immune system was
so completely debilitated by all of this stress and movement,
they just couldn't fight them off the way they normally
would have. North America's first A Copy arrived in nineteen
(29:55):
thirty seven and it became part of the animal collection
at the Bronx Zoo. Over time, time deforestation, mining and
the illegal hunting of O Copy because they are now
protected by Congolese law, these have led to declining numbers
in the wild, and the International Union for Conservation of
Nature or i u c IN, has declared the copy
(30:15):
an endangered species. The Institute in Congo for the Conservation
of Nature and the i u c IN SSC GIRAFFEO
Copy Specialist Group work together to lead conservation efforts in
the Democratic Republic of Congo established the O Copy Wildlife Reserve.
(30:35):
It is very difficult to get a count on a
Copy in the wild because they are very shy and
they are very good at avoiding people, and their natural
camouflage works very well. The current estimates that we have
are nearly a decade old because of that, but according
to the O Copy Conservation Project, they're an estimated three
thousand to thirty five hundred okopy on the Ocopy Wildlife
(30:58):
Reserve and somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand total
on Earth. In a twist, all those initially clumsy efforts
to procure a copy for zoos have actually led to
the development of a significant avenue for conservation of the species.
In seven Europe started the first captive breeding programs, and
(31:20):
the Antwerp Zoo, the first to have received an a
copy from Africa, is now a leader in that effort.
A lot of zoo programs also include institute support for
conservation efforts in the wild. As of last year, there
were almost two hundred copy in captivity and captivity breeding
programs have become an important part of the conservation effort
(31:42):
creating an assurance population. The goal is to reach two
hundred seventy animals and such facilities to ensure a genetically
healthy captive population, and since October eighteenth has been World
O Copy Day. Just one when. All of these conservation
groups usually share a lot of information and try to
(32:05):
help raise awareness and knowledge about them among the general population.
For listener, mail, I have a yummy one related to
our recent Accidental Inventions episode. This is from our listener, Becca,
who writes Dear Holly and Tracy. Hi, I'm Becca. I
started listening to the podcast about a year ago, but
have only started listening frequently during the spring break. I
am on right now. I was listening to the Accidental
(32:29):
Inventions episode earlier today while on a walk, and I
wanted to share some personal knowledge slash a story with you.
You were right. Nuts are in the recipe on the
back of chocolate morsel bags, although you can omit them,
which I do, which is the correct thing to do
in my opinion. I made a little cheering gesture because
I'm glad I remembered rightly. I felt vindicated. I've become
(32:51):
a bit of an expert on making these cookies, as
I baked them about six times within the first six
months of quarantine back in I still make them frequently,
as well as chocolate white chocolate chip cookies, both of
which are big crowd pleasers with my family and my
friends at school. I mean cookies a lot when we
had full day rehearsals for a play I was in,
and the cast always got excited when I said I
brought cookies to the lunch break. Your podcast is awesome
(33:13):
and I'm often up past midnight listening to it. And
like I said, when I'm on Walks, y'all are awesome
and I'm definitely going to keep listening to the podcast.
Hope you'll stay safe during these uncertain times, Becca. She
also sent a very beautiful picture of her cat, Angelo,
who she has had almost her whole life. And he
is a very mellow, cuddly cat. Um so cute, so cute. Um. Listen.
(33:38):
I'm a sucker for kitties, It's no secret, and this
one looks very cuddly indeed and precious. Um. I. I I
also love that Becca mentioned that she makes cookies and
brings them to her rehearsals. I am a big fan.
I'm just gonna put this out there in case anyone
has ever wondered bringing baked goods where you go pretty
(33:58):
lar for things that are like service situations is the
best way to win friends and influence people there is
on the earth. I brought brownies to my dentist recently
and he was so thankful, and I feel like I
get a plus service. I brought donuts to my tattoo
artists recently. I didn't handbake those, but listen if you
want to make somebody's day, bring something delicious wherever you go,
(34:21):
and everyone won't want to be your pal. This is
the secret I give unto you. If you did not
already know it, go forth, um, make more friends, get
great service wherever you go. And also just because you
want to take care of people. That's my usual impetus
is like I just want to make somebody's day easier
or nicer, delightful. Baked good will do it. Hi, ho,
I'm on it. Uh you would like to write to
(34:44):
us and share your baked good information or just whatever
is going on it's pertinent or not to the podcast.
You can do that a history podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also check out our social media
which is pretty much everywhere as Missed in History and
you can subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done
that yet, that's easiest. Pie on the I heart radio
app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff
(35:12):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.