page_title: Mo (Chinese zoology)
hierarchical_section_title: Mo (Chinese zoology)
context_page_description: Mo was the standard Chinese name for the giant panda from the 3rd century BCE to the 19th century CE, but in 1824, the French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat mistakenly identified the mo as the recently discovered black-and-white Malayan tapir, which never inhabited China in historical times. He based this misidentification on Chinese woodblock illustrations that depicted a mythological mo chimera with elephant trunk, rhinoceros eyes, cow tail, and tiger paws, which the famous Tang poet Bai/Bo Juyi first described in the 9th century. The consequences of Abel-Rémusat's error were extensive. His presumption that mo meant "Chinese tapir" was immediately adopted in Western zoology, and by the end of the 19th century it was accepted as modern scientific fact in China and Japan. In the 20th century, since mo had lost its original meaning, the giant panda was given a new Chinese name da xiongmao.
context_section_description: Mo (貘) was the standard Chinese name for the giant panda from the 3rd century BCE to the 19th century CE, but in 1824, the French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat mistakenly identified the mo as the recently discovered black-and-white Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), which never inhabited China in historical times. He based this misidentification on Chinese woodblock illustrations that depicted a mythological mo (貘) chimera with elephant trunk, rhinoceros eyes, cow tail, and tiger paws (also known as the Japanese baku 獏), which the famous Tang poet Bai/Bo Juyi first described in the 9th century. The consequences of Abel-Rémusat's error were extensive. His presumption that mo meant "Chinese tapir" was immediately adopted in Western zoology, and by the end of the 19th century it was accepted as modern scientific fact in China and Japan. In the 20th century, since mo had lost its original meaning, the giant panda was given a new Chinese name da xiongmao (大熊貓 lit. "large bear cat").
caption: Lithograph of the mo (貘) by Charles Philibert de Lasteyrie, 1824 Journal asiatique