"It took them eight years to do it, but it was finally successful. You can see that it has zebra legs and it has sort of a giraffe top. The neck looks like it's coming in strong, but not quite the length a baby giraffe would have." - nanchakusdragon
What in the Eldritch horrors hell is this nonsense? Some Tiktoker, who I sincerely hope is joking, is claiming that the Cincinnati Zoo has genetically engineered a monstrous new creation... which is, of course, a perfectly natural okapi.
Why do people insist on generating misinformation nonsense? I'm almost certain that this idiot probably knows that what he's saying is false - if not, the fact that he has hundreds of comments that all go, "Nah, that's an okapi" should clue him in. But when you put false information out there, it takes on a life of it's own, even if you meant it to be a joke. Hell, there's plenty of folks who believe in flat earths, or that the world is run by lizard men, or that politicians control the weather to attack their rivals. Compared to those outlandish crazy ideas, wacky experiments at the zoo seem fairly believable.
It may seem like it's all silly fun, but it's not. It can harder for zoos and aquariums to generate support for conservation if people don't believe their animals are real, but are rather some Frankensteinesque monsters. For an endangered species like the okapi, which already has low recognition with the general public, this nonsense only complicates efforts to raise awareness.
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