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 accep