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Thanks to Pranav and Zachary for their suggestions this week, where we learn the story behind two cuddly toys and the animals that inspired them!\n\nThe cartoon that inspired the toy:\n\n\n\nMy own teddy bear:\n\n\n\nAn American black bear (not William Taft although yes, there is a resemblance, including a willingness to eat entire possums in one sitting):\n\n\n\nWilliam Taft:\n\n\n\nA Virginia opossum:\n\n\n\nA possum with babies!\n\n\n\nStop trying to make Billy Possum a thing:\n\n \n\nAdmittedly it was pretty cute:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about two cuddly animals, one of which you\u2019ve definitely heard of, the other you might not have. Oh wait, you\u2019ve heard of both animals for sure\u2014but you might not have heard about the toys based on the animals. Thanks to Pranav and Zachary for their suggestions.\n\nThe president of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century was Theodore Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909. He was sometimes called Teddy instead of Theodore, although he didn\u2019t actually like the nickname. Roosevelt is widely considered to have been a very good president, as well as an interesting and sometimes eccentric man, but his main contribution to history as far as most people are concerned is the teddy bear.\n\nRoosevelt was an active man who spent a lot of time horseback riding, playing tennis, hiking, swimming, boxing, and lots of other things. He also liked to read, spoke several languages, and wrote poetry\u2014and he was an avid hunter and would travel the world to kill things. That\u2019s what he was doing in November 1902, when the governor of Mississippi invited him on a bear hunting trip.\n\nThe hunting party killed several bears that day, but Roosevelt hadn\u2019t shot anything. Some of the president\u2019s attendants decided to help things along, and they chased a bear down with hounds until it was exhausted, beat it until it was almost dead, and tied it to a tree. I know, this is awful. I\u2019m sorry. Then they said, \u201cHey, Mr. President, we found you a bear to shoot.\u201d\n\nNot only did Roosevelt refuse to kill the bear, he was angry at the people who had treated it so badly. He requested that the poor animal be shot to put it out of its misery, since by that point it was already dying from its treatment.\n\nBecause Roosevelt was the president, everything he did made its way into the newspapers, including this event. A political cartoonist used the bear hunt in a cartoon, only instead of an adult bear he made the bear a cute little cub. This inspired an inventor named Morris Michtom and his wife Rose to make a little bear cub doll to sell at their candy shop in Brooklyn, New York. They labeled it \u201cTeddy\u2019s bear\u201d and the rest is history.\n\nMost teddy bears don\u2019t look much like an actual American black bear. The black bear lives in forested areas throughout much of North America and used to be even more widespread, but was hunted to extinction in many areas. It\u2019s more closely related to the Asian black bear than it is to other bears found in North America, including the grizzly and polar bears. Its fur is usually black although some black bears are gray, various shades of brown, or sometimes even a rare cream color. The biggest American black bear ever measured was just barely under 8 feet long, or 2.41 meters, and probably weighed 1,100 pounds, or 500 kg. Most black bears are a lot smaller than that, though.\n\nBlack bears mate in summer but the fertilized egg cells don\u2019t start developing until November. This gives the female plenty of time to gain lots of healthy weight before she finds a safe place to spend the winter. Black bears hibernate in cold weather, although scientists are still debating whether its metabolic changes constitute true hibernation. A bear will use a hollow tree or small cave as a den, or will dig a den. It gets comfortable in its den and soon its heart rate starts to drop until it only beats abou...