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