Summary: <p>This week’s episode is about a couple of mystery elephants and a non-mysterious animal, the tapir…but there might be some mystery associated with that little-trunked cutie too.</p> <p>The tapir and its weird snoot:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-198" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/tapir-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226"></p> <p>The Moeritherium probably looked something like this:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-200" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Moeritherium-300x124.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="124"></p> <p>Some super cute Borneo elephants with super long tails:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-201" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Borneoelephants.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="183"></p> <p>A baby tapir omgimgoingtodieofcuteomg</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-202" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/babytapir-300x185.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="185"></p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>This week we’re looking at some animals with snoots. Specifically, a couple of mysterious elephants, and the tapeer, which looks like what you might get if a pig and an elephant had a baby.</p> <p>Usually I start episodes with the facts about a known animal and finish up with a mystery, but this week we’re starting with a strange and mysterious animal called a water elephant.</p> <p>There’s only been one reported sighting of a water elephant and it’s not a recent one. In 1912, an article appeared in the Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society. It was written by R.J. Cuninghame but concerned a Mr. Le Peti.</p> <p>Now, before I go on to discuss the water elephant, let me just say that I have a great big problem with someone named M. Le Peti. No pun intended. Going by the name, and the secondhand nature of the account, and the fact that a lot of stories about strange African animals from this era are hoaxes of one variety or another, I’m taking this whole thing with a grain of salt. But it’s an interesting story, and if there really was a guy saddled with the name of little mister man, I can see why he spent a lot of time exploring the Congo instead of becoming a Shakespearian actor or something.</p> <p>Anyway, I was able to find the original article, which has been digitized. It’s quite short, so instead of paraphrasing it I’ll just read the whole thing. It’s from the July 1912 issue of the journal, volume two number four, pages 97 through 98.</p> <p>[read article]</p> <p>There is no known animal that precisely fits Le Petit’s description. The closest is possibly the tapeer. You can pronounce it taper if you want. It’s spelled T-A-P-I-R and no one seems to know how it’s supposed to be pronounced. Anyway, there are five species of tapir still around, four in Central and South America and one in Asia.</p> <p>While the different species vary in size and coloring, generally a tapir is about 3 feet high</p>
