Word: tapirs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Heuvelmans points out that armchair zoologists have been announcing for nearly 150 years that no new animal would ever be found. But dozens have been found since then, including the Indian tapir, the Kodiak bear, the pygmy chimpanzee, the giant panda and the Komoda-dragon. Heuvelmans is confident that still more animals exist on earth than are dreamt of in the zoologist's handbooks...
...surprise. The man obviously loves his material, and he has fired the players with something of his own excitement. Even bored old Keenan Wynn is back at his best. Cast as a great big horrible actors' agent. Actor Wynn slinks about the screen looking like an absurdly prosperous tapir in dark glasses. But when a terrified female pressagent informs him that his big star is pregnant, Wynn reduces his face to a heap of malevolent hamburger, and produces the funniest line in the film: "Miss Baker," he snarls, "I shall hold you personally responsible...
Comedy or Truth? Gogol was a weedy little fellow with a tapir-like nose who was known at school as the "mysterious dwarf." His "spoilt and corrupt character" emerges like a combination of half a dozen case histories in abnormal psychology. He disliked making love to women, avoided his mother to the point of forging foreign stamps to make her believe he was living abroad. He was morbidly dependent on his friends' company. "Forget your wretched teeth." he wrote to a friend who wanted to go to see a dentist. "The soul is better than teeth...
...with Roast Tapir. The first language barrier to be cracked was that of the Cashibo Indians, who live along the Aguaytia River. There the linguists had a lucky start. Near the village of Pucallpa, they found a Cashibo named Gregorio Estrella, who had lived on the coast and learned Spanish. Recalls one of Townsend's team: "Gregorio led us to his tribe. They were so pleased when they found we wanted to live just the way they did that they built a house for us." As a starter, the linguists began asking the names of everyday things: banana, fire...
...languages, Townsend's linguists did not always have the luck to find a Spanish-speaking interpreter. But their approach was always the same: gain the confidence of the Indians by living with them and sharing their food (including such exotic dishes as monkey stew and roast tapir). Once a team had learned a language, it set about publishing a simple reading primer...