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b"Thanks to Elaine for suggesting the saola this week!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nThe saola: rushing to save the most 'spectacular zoological discovery' of the 20th century\\n\\nStriped rabbit revealed in Laos forest\\n\\nSaola horns:\\n\\n\\n\\nA saola from a 1999 camera trap (photo taken from link above):\\n\\n\\n\\nA female saola (named Martha) who unfortunately only survived in captivity a few weeks (photo taken from link above):\\n\\n\\n\\nA striped bunny!! The Annamite striped rabbit:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nThis week\\u2019s topic is a remarkable hoofed animal suggested last year\\xa0by Elaine, the saola, and another remarkable animal I learned about while researching the saola. Both animals are newly discovered by science.\\nThe scientific story of the saola starts in May of 1992. The Southeast Asian country of Vietnam had established a new nature reserve a few years before and wanted to learn more about the kinds of animals and plants living there. A team of scientists surveyed the area and one of the things they found was a skull with horns they didn\\u2019t recognize. The horns were long and straight and very close together.\\nThey knew the skull came from an animal new to science, so they tried to find one to see what it looked like alive. But they couldn\\u2019t find one. It wasn\\u2019t until 1998 that a scientist saw a live saola, a female captured by hunters and kept in captivity until it died a few weeks later.\\nThe saola is an antelope-like bovid that looks a lot like an oryx. We talked about the Arabian oryx in episode 218 and there are other species of\\xa0oryx that live in parts of Africa. Oryx have long, straight horns that grow side by side too. But genetic analysis of saola remains indicates that the saola is much more closely related to cattle than to oryxes. The saola was described formally in 1993 and placed in its own genus, Pseudoryx, meaning false oryx.\\nThe saola stands about 3 feet tall at the shoulder, or 92 centimeters, and is mostly chocolate brown with white markings on the head and a black stripe down its spine. Both males and females have horns, although males grow longer horns. The horns grow side by side, usually only a few inches apart, or about 8 or 9 centimeters, and are dark brown or black. They grow up to about 20 inches long, or 50 centimeters, and are often about the same distance apart at their tips as they are at the base of the skull. People sometimes call the saola the Asian unicorn because it\\u2019s so rare and its horns look sort of like unicorn horns, although they grow back from the skull instead of forward and aren\\u2019t spiral shaped. So, not actually very much like unicorn horns.\\nThe saola also has a short tail, slender legs, and a short muzzle, but its tongue is over 6 inches long, or 15 centimeters. It\\u2019s rough like a cat\\u2019s tongue and it uses it to groom itself, just like a cat, and to help it gather the plants it eats, unlike a cat. It lives in forested mountains and migrates to lower elevations in winter, although its fur is thick and soft to keep it warm in higher elevations. It also has special pores around its eyes that secrete a special fluid it uses to mark plants and rocks the way many antelopes do. Because the saola hasn\\u2019t been observed in the wild, we don\\u2019t know if it\\u2019s marking its territory or just letting other saola know where it is.\\nThe saola is critically endangered, mostly due to poaching. A team of forest guards patrols the park looking for traps that hunters set. Poachers often hunt animals in the park not because the hunters are hungry but because they can make a lot of money selling exotic animals to other countries as so-called medicine. The saola isn't considered to have any medicinal uses, though, so while a hunter will sometimes kill one to eat, mostly it just gets caught in traps set for other animals. Since it\\u2019s so rare to start with, every saola killed in this way could ultimately cause the entire species to go extinct."