Mercury intern Sahar is wearing a shirt today that, amongst other things, includes a picture of a tapir.

Tapir drawing by Robert A. Wilson; taken from tapirback.com

"What the heck is that?" we cried. "Is it an anteater? Is it a dinosaur?"

"No," she replied. "It's a tapir. It's a sort of horse/elephant/pig thing."

"Wow!" we exclaimed. So, of course our next question was, "Can you milk them?"

Sahar did not know the answer. I felt pretty certain that you could milk a tapir if you wanted to, and perhaps the milk would come out of its funny snout.

So I immediately embarked on some internet research to get to the bottom of this question. Results? Inconclusive. But I did find this, which may or may not be worth 55 seconds of your time:

So, in summation: Tapirs are cow/horse/anteater thingies that may or may not provide milk, that may or may not grant wishes when you rub their magical snouts, and that definitely love massages.