Louise Doughty chooses 'oddball' okapi for talk at Zoo

Novelist Louise Doughty will be at London Zoo this evening for the first in this year’s talks by writers about the conservation of endangered animals. The series will see historian Tom Holland consider Asian lions and Susie Orbach lead a psychological analysis of jungles, but Doughty’s choice was obvious: the okapi.

“I chose it because it’s the oddball,” she said. “If the giraffe is the supermodel of the animal kingdom then the okapi is the dumpy cousin in the corner. But it has a whole mythical quality.”

Doughty is interested in nature but on a theoretical scale rather than practical. “My first pet was a stick insect,” she said.

“I killed it. It sheds its skin and leaves it, and I think I binned the wrong thing.”