Since I have a real liking for natures’ most peculiar, weird, mysterious or misunderstood underdogs I decided to design some of them for anyone who wants to get to know these natural weirdo’s a little better!

The Brazilian or lowland tapir is the largest terrestrial mammal in the Amazon, that appears like it’s been assembled from other animals’ random body parts. Although it seems like a mash-up of an elephant, a wild hog and a hippo, it is actually closely related to horses and rhinoceroses. Their trunks are great for plucking leaves from shrubs and can even be used as snorkels! The tapirs’ young look nothing like the adults, they seem like a hybrid of a fawn and a piglet! Tapir generally have one young every two years, but in no time at all your knitted tapir family can happily grow as big as you like!

This tapir measures 15 cm from nose to bum and was knitted on 2.25 mm double pointed needles (UK 13, US 1) in Rowan Felted Tweed (175) cinnamon, double strands of Lopi Einband (0887) chocolate and (0886) beige heather. The 7 cm bonus baby tapir was done in (single) Lopi Einband (0887) chocolate and Lopi Einband (0851).
This project is an easy to medium knit, it asks for some knitting in the round, some minor short row, i-cord and intarsia color knitting and transferring of stitches.