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Happy World Tapir Day!

27/4/2015

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Another 27 April is here, which means that it's now World Tapir Day - the eighth WTD since its inception in 2008.

World Tapir Day is being celebrated at events in at least eleven countries in 2015. Ten Japanese zoos have hosted events to mark the occasion, as have zoos in other Asian countries, and across Europe, North America and Australia.  Particularly special is always the World Tapir Day celebration in Belize that coincides with the country's National Tapir Day at the Belize Zoo. There will be other events happening, some of which we'll learn about only after the fact.  Our Facebook page has the full list of events on it.

In Malaysia, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, PERHILITAN, is running a campaign to draw attention to the problem of tapirs being killed on the country's highways:

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My personal highlight this year has been this wonderful infographic produced by Peppermint Narwhal Creative:
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Happy World Tapir Day everybody! We hope you are having a wonderful day.

-- Anthony.
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Tapirs and Brands: 2. Porsche Tapiro

22/4/2015

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The history of motoring and tapirs aren't an obvious area of commonality. Countless thousands of tapirs have been injured and killed by the increase of roads and traffic that cut across their habitats.  But over 45 years ago, tapirs served as inspiration for one of Porsche's most attractive concept cars, the Porsche Tapiro.
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The car was based on the Porsche 914/916 platform and its most notable feature was the double set of gullwing doors - one set for the driver and passenger, and one set for accessing the storage area above the engine. The observant will have also noticed a Volkswagen badge on the front of the car: this concept car was not the only foray of joint VW-Porsche activity; indeed, the close connection between the two marques continues.

The Porsche Tapiro, despite being a concept car, was actually a fully functioning car, thanks to its 914 base.  After the car had served its life as an exhibition piece, the car was sold to a Spanish industrialist in 1972, who used it as his daily drive until around 1980. The car was destroyed during an industrial dispute involving its owner - allegedly by employees of the industrialist's company, who blew it up with an explosive device placed under it.  The wreck was purchased by Guugiaro's company Italdesign, where it remains on display in its unrestored state.

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Created by Italian designer Georgetto Giugiaro, who was named as the Car Designer of the Century three decades later, the Porsche Tapiro was a concept car produced for the 1970 Turin Motor Show exhibition circuit. Described as the first example of his influential "folded paper" style that featured in later car design (such as the DeLorean made famous in the Back to the Future films), Giugiaro named the car after the tapir because he felt that the design resembled it.
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Tapirs in Popular Culture: 1. Les Naufragés du Temps

12/4/2015

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The French writer/illustrator Jean-Claude Forest is best known for his comic strip Barbarella, which was adapted in 1968 into a film starring Jane Fonda. A prolific and successful comic strip creator, Forest was also responsible for the character Tapir, the mastermind of interstellar organised crime in the 30th century.

Forest's Les Naufragés du Temps (hereafter referred to as 'LNdT') series tells the story of a couple of humans who were placed into cryonic hiberation in the 1990s as humanity faced being wiped out through pestilence. Christopher and Valérie awake in 2981, a time when Earth is threatened by alien, intelligent rats.

Of the many characters that Chris and Valerie encounter is Tapir, the largest criminal in the cosmos - another universe, allegedly. Tapir is depicted as a sword-wielding giant in a flowing cloak, who, despite originating from another universe, looks very much like a Brazilian tapir.

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The title of LNdT references Jules Verne's novel The Mysterious Island, and, much in the style of Barbarella - itself dubbed "the first comic strip for grown-ups" - LNdT continues in the same vein. There were ten parts to the LNdT series, and Tapir featured in at least three of them. LNdT was first published in 1974, with multiple reprints since.

The third volume of LNdT was released in English as Lost in Time: Labyrinth in 1986, although Tapir was renamed The Boar (presumably because the intended target market was not as familiar with tapirs as it ought to have been).  It has been described as a landmark of modern science fiction.

Forest died on 30 December 1998, having suffered from severe asthma for many years.

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Tapirs and Brands: 1. Tapir Brand Flour, Australia

1/4/2015

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A new series on the WTD blog is a potted history of tapirs and brands from around the world.  Whilst tapirs are not one of the flagship species that are used in marketing campaigns, they have nonetheless been featured from time to time.  We'd love to hear from you about other brands and marketing campaigns that have featured tapirs - both current and past.

First up is Tapir Brand, a trade mark filed almost a century ago by a flour mill in Western Australia.

On 15 December 1919, the York Flour Milling Company Ltd filed a trade mark for Tapir Brand - one of three filed on that day (the others being Hoopoe Brand and Shuttlecock and Battledore Brand). The brands were presumably filed as part of a plan to expand its range of products.  The filing occurred exactly a century after the Malayan tapir was first described in Western scientific literature by French zoologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest.
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Based in the Western Australian town of York, around 100km east of Perth, the company began operations in 1892 as the Empire Milling Company. It began trading as the York Flour Milling Company in 1908, producing 3000 tonnes of flour, 900 tonnes of bran and 450 tonnes of pollard each year at its peak from its four-storey flour mill on Broome Street.

Registered as application 26762, the Tapir Brand trade mark was accepted in the following year on 5 March, registered over fifteen years later on 14 December 1935, and renewed 36 years later on 15 December 1961. Tapir Brand flour, to the best of my knowledge, never made it to market.

The flour mill closed as a working mill in 1967, and served as an arts centre to the local community until recently. Tapir Brand is a footnote in Australian trade mark history of a brand that was never used commercially that was submitted by a regional primary producer that ceased operating almost half a century ago.
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    The World Tapir Day blog. Posts about World Tapir Day, tapirs, conservation, the environment and random tapir-related topics.

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