Taiwanese artist Cherng (whom we'll cover in detail at some stage in the future) spends much of his time drawing tapirs, which has led to his work appearing around the Taipei Zoo, on many consumer items, as well as featuring in the new video of Taiwanese alt rock band Mayday.

You'll never see as many dancing tapirs in a single location as you will in the following video. Or tapir-fish, tapir mannequins, or Malayan tapirs in other contexts that you'd never thought you'd see them in.

It's brilliant.

-- Anthony.

Every now and again, we come across a tapir-related project or activity that makes us very happy.  The Tapi Project is the latest of these, and reminds us why World Tapir Day was founded originally.

Based in Malaysia, the Tapi Project is an initiative of the artist collective ArtSemble. It is a tapir awareness art installation project that will be exhibited at the Penang Performing Arts Centre for World Tapir Day, with a plan to tour the exhibition following this.

The central premise of the Tapi Project is to raise awareness about Malayan tapirs through visiting schools to conduct art workshops. ArtSemble members give a presentation about tapirs and another about contemporary art, before teaching the students how to sculpt tapirs with clay. These tapirs will form part of the art installation to be shown on World Tapir Day. They hope to have around 3,000 tapir sculptures in the installation to represent the number of Malayan tapirs remaining (which may indeed be slightly on the high side).

To help its efforts, ArtSemble has created a crowdfunding page to raise money to support its efforts. Supporters will receive a range of tapir-themed items, including t-shirts, key rings and sculptures.