40 Fun Facts About Tapir

Tapirs have a stocky body and a short trunk, yet which animals are their closest relatives?

Horses and rhinoceroses are the tapir's fellow odd-toed ungulates, the only other families left in that group. Pigs belong to the even-toed side instead.

Every baby tapir is born with which coat pattern, which hides it in dappled forest light?

Stripes and spots cover the young of all four species, and San Diego Zoo likens them to watermelons on legs. The markings fade within the first months.

A frightened tapir can hide underwater with its flexible snout above the surface, working like what?

A snorkel is how San Diego Zoo describes the snout in water, and a tapir can stay under for several minutes. On land the same snout plucks leaves and fruit.

In Japanese folklore, the Baku, a spirit that shares its name with the tapir, devours what?

Nightmares are the Baku's food, and a child woken by a bad dream would call on it three times to come and eat. In Japanese, baku is also the word for the Malayan tapir.

Baird's tapir, nicknamed the mountain cow, is the national animal of which Central American country?

Belize counts the tapir among its national symbols, alongside the keel-billed toucan and the mahogany tree. Hunting the animal is illegal there.

A sleeping Malayan tapir's black-and-white coat can fool predators into mistaking it for what?

A large rock is what the two-tone coat suggests, because the pale saddle breaks up the animal's outline in the forest. No other tapir has such bold adult markings.

The tapir's short, flexible trunk is formed by which two body parts joined together?

Nose and upper lip merge into a snout that can move in all directions. A tapir can explore a foot-wide circle of ground with it without moving its head.

Which sleepy Psychic-type Pokémon from the original 151 was designed after Japan's tapir-like Baku?

Drowzee evolves into Hypno, which carries a pendulum like a stage hypnotist. Both designs draw on the same tapir of Japanese folklore.

A tapir that enters a river to feed will often sink to the bottom and then do what?

Tapirs walk on the riverbed to graze on soft water plants, strolling along the bottom fully submerged. They also take to water to cool off and to escape predators.

Today's tapirs differ so little from their ancient ancestors that experts give them which label?

Living fossils is the label used by the Tapir Specialist Group, which dates the first tapirs to about 50 million years ago. Some 15 species once roamed three continents.

A baby tapir, born alone after a pregnancy of about 13 months, is known by which name?

A calf is the term, and the newborn can stand within an hour or two of birth. A healthy mother has just one every two years or so.

Tapirs have been known to sink underwater so that which animals can pick parasites off their bodies?

Small fish act as a cleaning crew for submerged tapirs, which also wallow in mud pits to stay cool and free of insects.

All tapir species share which arrangement of toes, which helps them walk on soft, muddy ground?

Four front, three back is the pattern on every tapir, and each splayed toe ends in a hoof. Their nearest relatives carry their weight on only one or three toes per foot.

Besides large crocodiles, which cat is the only predator able to take a full-grown Baird's tapir?

Jaguar attacks often fail, and tapirs in one national park carry large claw scars to prove it. Pumas are a danger only to the young.

Which giant snake of the Amazon basin is known to attack the South American tapir?

Green anaconda attacks are possible because it is one of the longest and heaviest snakes alive, yet a meal as big as a tapir is rare even for the largest individuals.

The mountain tapir, smallest of the four species, lives high in the cloud forests of which range?

Andes cloud forests and high grasslands in Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru are its only home, and temperatures there routinely fall below freezing.

The mountain tapir differs from every other tapir species by having which kind of coat?

Thick and woolly fur, more than three centimetres long in places, keeps out the cold of its high home. Even newborns arrive with the same warm coat.

Which sound is one of the most common calls tapirs make to one another?

A shrill whistle is among the commonest tapir calls, and San Diego Zoo likens it to car brakes screeching to a halt. A snort with stamping feet means a tapir is preparing to defend itself.

Tapirs mark their forest paths and territories by spraying what onto plants along the way?

Urine left on plants tells other tapirs who has passed, which helps neighbours avoid a violent meeting. Their territories often overlap all the same.

Malayan tapir forests in Thailand and Malaysia have been widely cleared to plant which crop?

Oil palms now cover large tracts of former tapir forest. Between 2006 and 2010 the break-up of habitat displaced 142 tapirs in peninsular Malaysia.

Tapirs evolved in the north and only walked into South America after which land bridge formed?

Isthmus of Panama crossings sent tapirs south in the Great American Interchange, a two-way swap of animals between the continents. The tapirs of what is now the United States later died out.

In 1758 Carl Linnaeus placed the South American tapir in the same genus as which much larger animal?

Hippopotamus terrestris was the tapir's first scientific name, given when it was the only tapir known in Europe. A French zoologist separated the two animals in 1762.

Which former US president led the expedition that first collected a disputed fifth tapir, named in 2013?

Theodore Roosevelt suspected in 1914 that his Brazilian expedition had found a new tapir, because local hunters recognised two kinds. Most experts still file it under the South American tapir.

Teeth of the extinct giant tapir were first found on sale in Chinese drug stores under which name?

Dragon bones were sold for use in traditional medicine, and a Munich palaeontologist spotted the tapir teeth among them in 1903. The animal weighed about 620 kilograms.

The English word tapir comes ultimately from which language once spoken along Brazil's coast?

Tupi was once a lingua franca across colonial Brazil, yet Brazilians today know the tapir by a non-Tupi name, anta.

Besides mainland Southeast Asia, the Malayan tapir survives in the wild on which Indonesian island?

Sumatra holds the only island population, found south of Lake Toba. Fewer than 2,500 adult Malayan tapirs are thought to remain across the whole range.

A 15-year study radio-collared Baird's tapirs in Corcovado National Park, in which country?

Costa Rica hosted the Baird's Tapir Project from 1994 to 2009, tracking the animals' social lives and habitat choices on the Osa Peninsula.

Mountain tapirs seek out which natural feature to top up on the essential minerals they need?

Salt licks round out a diet of leaves, ferns and lupins. Mountain tapirs matter so much to their high forests that they are counted a keystone species.

Malayan tapirs often have a cloudy haze over which part of the eye, one reason they see poorly?

The cornea is thought to cloud over after repeated exposure to light, so the tapirs lean on their excellent hearing and smell instead.

Especially thick skin on which part of a tapir's body helps it survive an attack by a big cat?

Back of the neck skin is a tapir's armour against big cats and crocodiles, and the animal can also fight back with a powerful bite of its own.

Which mostly plant-eating predator was filmed attacking a mountain tapir nearly twice its weight?

Spectacled bear is the name of South America's only native bear, and as little as five percent of its diet is meat.

Tapirs often raise their snouts and bare their teeth to pick up scents, a posture with which name?

Flehmen is often seen in male tapirs sniffing for rivals or for females ready to mate. Tigers and giraffes pull the same face.

What does pinchaque, the species name of the mountain tapir Tapirus pinchaque, originally refer to?

A legendary beast called the Pinchaque was said to roam the same mountains as the tapir, and its name passed to the real animal.

Remains in Sarawak's Niah Caves show tapirs lived on which island until at least 8,000 years ago?

Borneo's tapirs are known only from ancient remains, and some conservationists have proposed bringing the animal back to the island.

Thuliadanta, the oldest known relative of tapirs, was unearthed in which surprising region?

Arctic Canada was mild and forested some 50 million years ago, and this early cousin of tapirs may have lived there all year round.

Which bird has been seen eating ticks off Baird's tapirs that lie down and roll over to be cleaned?

Black vulture and yellow-headed caracara both serve as cleaners, and a tapir will lift its limbs to present the tick-infested patches.

Baird's tapir is named after Spencer Fullerton Baird, a naturalist who later ran which organisation?

Smithsonian Institution collections grew from 6,000 specimens to over two million under Baird, who served as its secretary from 1878 until his death.

Which order of mammals, named in 1848 from the Greek for odd toes, includes the tapirs?

Perissodactyla once spread over most of the globe, but it now holds only about 17 species in three families.

A study of lowland tapirs in Peru identified 122 different kinds of what in their dung?

Seeds pass through a tapir and land well fertilised far from the parent plant, which is why zoologists credit tapirs with shaping tropical forests.

Legend says the gods made Japan's tapir-like Baku out of what?

Leftover pieces from the gods' other animals went into the Baku, legend says, which fits its patchwork look: old woodblock prints give it an elephant's head and trunk with a tiger's claws.