A small furry mammal from Africa and the Middle East that looks similar to a guinea pig or rock hyrax, also called a coney or rock badger.
From Hebrew 'shāphān' and Arabic 'wabr', the daman was known to ancient peoples of the Levant; the English name possibly derives from Malay or African languages through colonial trade routes.
The daman is one of the world's most famous misidentified animals—it looks like a rodent but is actually more closely related to elephants through a shared ancestor, meaning this tiny fuzz ball and the largest land animal are distant cousins hiding an evolutionary secret!
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