This is called viral suppression. Getting and keeping an undetectable viral load is the best thing you can do to stay healthy. There is also a prevention benefit: people living with HIV who take HIV medication daily as prescribed and get and keep an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of transmitting HIV to an HIV-negative partner through sex. Learn more: Read our fact sheet about the health and prevention benefits of viral suppression and maintaining an undetectable viral load PDF KB.
Here are some tips that may help you take every dose of your HIV medication, every day :. You can also visit HIV. Taking medication every day can be difficult. That is why it is important to understand some of the challenges you may face and to think through how you might address them before they happen. For example, remembering when to take your medication can be complicated. Some medication regimens involve taking several pills every day—with or without food—or before or after other medications.
Making a schedule of when and how to take your medicines can be helpful. It can blend into its surroundings thanks to the brown and white stripes on its rump, which mimic the appearance of streaks of sunlight coming through the trees.
Its plant-based diet consists of fruits, buds, leaves, twigs, and other vegetation. Just like the giraffe and cow, the okapi has four stomachs that aid with digesting tough plants. Also like its giraffe cousin, the okapi has a long, dark tongue that can strip leaves from branches. An okapi consumes between 45 and 60 pounds of food each day, including riverbed clay for minerals and salt.
It will occasionally eat bat excrement for nutrients. Active during the day, the elusive okapi prefers to be alone. Its hooves secrete sticky territorial markings, while males also spray their territory with urine.
Sometimes, however, okapis will congregate in small groups to eat, groom, and even play. Female okapis typically have only one calf per pregnancy. Okapi mothers communicate with their calves by making infrasounds , which are noises that are undetectable to the human ear.
Female okapis are very protective of their young and will beat the ground with their hooves to ward off potential threats. However, upon reaching six months of age, a calf must fend for itself. In , a militia group killed 14 okapis at a conservation center located at the headquarters of the Okapi Conservation Project.
Today, poachers continue to kill okapis for their meat and skin, and civil unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo makes enforcement of wildlife protection laws increasingly difficult. Human-induced deforestation also leads to fragmentation and destruction of crucial okapi habitats. Founded in , the Okapi Conservation Project still exists, despite the brutal attack on its headquarters in The Okapi Conservation Project works with the Institute in Congo for the Conservation of Nature to provide resources to rangers who patrol the reserve and other okapi-occupied areas.
IUCN has also teamed up with other organizations, including the Zoological Society of London, to implement a decade-long strategy to reduce illegal activity that could drive the okapi to extinction. All rights reserved. With its white-and-black striped hindquarters and front legs, it looks like it must be related to zebras! The okapi is indeed the only living relative of the giraffe.
Like a giraffe, an okapi has very large, upright ears, which catch even slight sounds. Okapis are hard to find in their native habitat: deep forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including Ituri Forest, a dense rainforest.
Okapis are very wary, and their highly developed hearing alerts them to run when they hear humans in the distance. In fact, while indigenous people of the Ituri Forest knew of okapis and would occasionally catch one in their pit traps, scientists did not know of okapis until The secretive nature of okapis and the difficulty most humans have traveling in okapi habitat have made okapis hard to observe.
We estimate there might be more than 35, okapis in their native habitat, but no one knows for sure. Made for a rainforest: The okapi's home is in the tropical rainforest in the northeast region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo formerly Zaire , in Central Africa. Why does the okapi have zebra-like stripes? These markings, which seem very bold to us, offer great camouflage when an okapi stands in the partial sunlight that filters through its dense rainforest habitat.
The stripes may also help a young okapi follow its mother through the dark forest, and they may help adults find each other, too. In a rainforest, there are trees with branches hanging down, as well as roots and tree trunks to dodge. Okapis need to have shorter legs and necks to help them swerve around these obstacles. Being really tall is not a good idea in a forest! Okapis often travel up to 0.
They are generally solitary, unless an adult female has a calf with her. Adult males have home ranges that cover more area, and they can travel up to 2. The males try to keep other males out of their territories but allow females to travel through in search of food. Both male and female okapis are most active during the afternoon through the evening.
Okapis use their prehensile tongue to get food by pulling leaves from trees and into their mouth. The tongue is also an important grooming tool, helping to keep the velvety soft, short coat in tip-top shape.
Okapis have also been seen eating clay and burnt charcoal, probably for minerals. And just like giraffes, sheep, and goats, okapis are ruminants.
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