Talk:Okapi

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Okapi has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: April 28, 2015. (Reviewed version).

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There is a request, submitted by Catfurball (talk), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

The rationale behind the request is: Important.

7 Cervical Vertebrae

The diagram shows that both giraffes and okapi have 7 cervical vertebrae. Almost all mammals -- including humans -- have 7 cervical vertebrae. Could someone either add more information explaining this picture, or remove it? --BooksXYZ (talk) 07:53, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OKK liioiio ii 37.210.157.253 (talk) 07:00, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Common names

I've just removed the name "Congolese giraffe", as I can't find any non-citogensis sources for it, and the name was added by an account in 2018 whose only other edit was to add "speed goat" as an alt. name for the Pronghorn. Now that I'm looking, though, I'm having a hard time finding sources for the name "zebra giraffe", which was added in 2027 (804881518) (Forest giraffe, added in the same diff is sourceable in pre-Wikipedia books [1][2]). No common names other than "okapi" were present when this article was taken through GA by Sainsf. Just wondering if anybody had any insights? GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 18:09, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenLipstickLesbian: Added references for other names of the Okapi. Catfurball (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Catfurball Thanks! Just to be slightly annoying, though, the World Atlas source for Zebra Giraffe was published in April 2018[3]. Can we find anything pre November 2017? I've looked on google scholar[4] and google books[5], but no luck. If this was at least used in English, I'd expect something published before us. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 20:22, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenLipstickLesbian: Sorry I did not find any older then that. Catfurball (talk) 21:03, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah... I'm really starting to think the name is fictitious, and the appearance in World Atlas is as a result of WP:CITOGENESIS.

Also, hope you don't mind, I'm going to revert you on the "Congolese giraffe" thing too, for similar reasons. A Z animals is a really low quality churnalism/content farm site - see this RSN discussion.GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 21:05, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For fun, you may want to read about the Brazilian aardvark. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 21:09, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Catfurball The Pulse article you have found, while generally might be okay, has clearly been plagiarized from other sources, including, quite likely, us! The names are presented in the same order with the same miscapitalization of "Congo" present in our article[6], with some of the rest coming from the San Diego Zoo page.[7] Unfortunately, the San Diego Zoo page doesn't mention any alternative names. As per WP:CIRCULAR, it's an unreliable source. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 22:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, really not sure that "forest giraffe" is a common name in the Wikipedia sense of the word - it's used in a few really old books, I suspect as an artefact of translation. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 19:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenLipstickLesbian: By this website [8]] Congo giraffe, zebra giraffe and African unicorn are nicknames for the Okapi. Catfurball (talk) 20:25, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I saw that when I was searching for 'congo giraffe'- [9] it only goes back to 2023 , though, and it really doesn't give of 'reliable source' vibes. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 20:30, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copying some sources I shared on RfD from Newspapers.com that somewhat supports zebra giraffe as kind of an alternative name:

It seems like in the first half of the 1900s, they were occasionally referred to as a "zebra-giraffe" (including the hyphen maybe exclusively?) in news reports about their discovery/bring to Europe/America (from newspapers.com: [10] "is, in fact, a sort of zebra-giraffe", [11] "Capturing alive the first okapi (zebra-giraffe)", [12] "Okapi, Sir Harry Johnston's short-horned zebra-giraffe", [13] "... the okapi does not Inherit. The British Government is now engaged with experiments with this zebra-giraffe hybrid").

Based on the sources, I think having it bolded in the lead is not correct and we should perhaps a brief mention in "Etymology and taxonomy" it being sometimes referred to as a "zebra-giraffe" in early news stories. I definitely think we remove all mentions of "Congolese giraffe" at this point since newspapers.com has zero hits before 2018. Skynxnex (talk) 22:04, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting findings @Skynxnex, thanks for sharing! I agree that zebra giraffe should not be bolded in the lead or otherwise be given too much prominence. This may be enough to warrant a brief mention under Etymology and taxonomy. The more recent proliferation of zebra giraffe does appear to be a case of citogenesis but to the extent the name was in use in early reports it could be mentioned and there's an opportunity to set the record straight. If mentioned, include the hyphen (zebra-giraffe). —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫‍(talk) 01:30, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Zebra giraffe" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Zebra giraffe has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 23 § Zebra giraffe until a consensus is reached. GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🦋 20:21, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]