

The okapi, a creature so strange and rare it was once thought to be a unicorn, has been photographed for the first time in the wild.

The images were captured by a motion-triggered camera in Virunga National Park, deep in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Some had feared that the okapi – a close relative of the giraffe, though mottled with zebra-like stripes – had been driven extinct by habitat loss and human predation during the decade-long central African civil war.

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Images: Zoological Society of London*

*Note: Be sure to check out "How Africa's Unicorn Hides Itself," our cat's-eye view of okapi camouflage.

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