The tongue that no man can tame

One of the perks of working for a textbook publisher is that when things are slow, there are plenty of interesting things to read about in the textbooks. (Happily, since we only go up to eighth grade, there is no book on calculus.) Take the okapi of Africa, for instance.

These animals appear to be part giraffe, part zebra, and they live in a rainforest. (One little-known fact, which is not in the textbook, is that they used to live primarily in frat houses, but the elders kept complaining that the young okapi hung their long tongues out the windows all the time, and it was unsightly for the neighborhood.) Their tongue is their main claim to fame. It's so long that they can use it to clean their eyes. And apparently they do use it to clean their eyes.

I don't know about you, but the first thing I wonder when I think about that is, why would they want to?

I mean, in humans, anyway, the eyeball is the cleanest part of our body. The tongue is one of the dirtiest. Common sense would tell you to keep that tongue away from the eyeball. But here are the okapi, gratuitously swishing their long tongues around in their eye sockets.

It also makes me wonder what other bizarre things they use their tongues for. Do they clean each other's eyes out with their tongues? "Here, you've got a sleepy in your eye, let me help you get that out..." Do mother okapi have to yell, "Get your tongue out of your sister's eye!"? Does the tongue double as a tie when they want to go eat from a tree in a fancy part of town?

The tongue is no doubt used by adolescent okapi to snatch a meal that their sibling is just about to eat, prompting a protest of "Mom! Barney took my lunch again!" And Mother Okapi probably sighs and wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to be something a little less unique, like an ant.

Like many fathers, the dad okapi probably take their role of mentor and teacher very seriously. Certain rituals and behaviors must be passed down to the young, and they are the ones to do it. Therefore they carefully instruct their children, particularly the boys, in the important ritual of tapping an unsuspecting okapi on the far shoulder with their tongue and quickly withdrawing it, making the other okapi look at...nothing. I say "particularly the boys" because the mothers are no doubt too smart to let their mates teach their daughters any such nonsense.

I'm thinking, though, that it might be handy to have an okapi around the house for certain chores. Washing the windows on the third story, for instance. Maybe they could also rescue kittens from trees, although the felines in our neighborhood seem more inclined to hide under cars than climb trees. But I wouldn't want to have to clean its tongue. What would you use, a steamer and carpet cleaner?

If you need to know any other useless facts about obscure animals of the world, just ask. I probably know some.