Tapir
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40 free Tapir trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tapirs look like nothing else in the forest: the body of a sturdy pig, a short trunk that never stops moving, and a family history that reaches back tens of millions of years. They are shy, rarely seen, and far less famous than they deserve to be. This quiz gathers the best tapir fun facts: how the trunk works, why tapirs love water, what their babies look like, which predators they face and where each species lives, from Central and South America to Southeast Asia. It also covers their prehistoric relatives, their place in folklore and pop culture, and the people working to protect them. The questions start easy and end with a few deep cuts, so they suit curious kids, classrooms, quiz nights and wildlife fans alike. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tapirs have a stocky body and a short trunk, yet which animals are their closest relatives?
Horses and rhinoceroses
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.
Q 02Every baby tapir is born with which coat pattern, which hides it in dappled forest light?
Stripes and spots
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.
Q 03A frightened tapir can hide underwater with its flexible snout above the surface, working like what?
A snorkel
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.
Q 04In Japanese folklore, the Baku, a spirit that shares its name with the tapir, devours what?
Nightmares
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.
Q 05Baird's tapir, nicknamed the mountain cow, is the national animal of which Central American country?
Belize
Belize counts the tapir among its national symbols, alongside the keel-billed toucan and the mahogany tree. Hunting the animal is illegal there.
Q 06A sleeping Malayan tapir's black-and-white coat can fool predators into mistaking it for what?
A large rock
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.
Q 07The tapir's short, flexible trunk is formed by which two body parts joined together?
Nose and upper lip
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.
Q 08Which sleepy Psychic-type Pokémon from the original 151 was designed after Japan's tapir-like Baku?
Drowzee
Drowzee evolves into Hypno, which carries a pendulum like a stage hypnotist. Both designs draw on the same tapir of Japanese folklore.
Q 09A tapir that enters a river to feed will often sink to the bottom and then do what?
Walk on the riverbed
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.
Q 10Today's tapirs differ so little from their ancient ancestors that experts give them which label?
Living fossils
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.
Q 11A baby tapir, born alone after a pregnancy of about 13 months, is known by which name?
A calf
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.
Q 12Tapirs have been known to sink underwater so that which animals can pick parasites off their bodies?
Small fish
Small fish act as a cleaning crew for submerged tapirs, which also wallow in mud pits to stay cool and free of insects.
Q 13All tapir species share which arrangement of toes, which helps them walk on soft, muddy ground?
Four front, three back
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.
Q 21Tapirs evolved in the north and only walked into South America after which land bridge formed?
Isthmus of Panama
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.
Q 22In 1758 Carl Linnaeus placed the South American tapir in the same genus as which much larger animal?
Hippopotamus
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.
Q 23Which former US president led the expedition that first collected a disputed fifth tapir, named in 2013?
Q 14Besides large crocodiles, which cat is the only predator able to take a full-grown Baird's tapir?
Jaguar
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.
Q 15Which giant snake of the Amazon basin is known to attack the South American tapir?
Green anaconda
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.
Q 16The mountain tapir, smallest of the four species, lives high in the cloud forests of which range?
Andes
Andes cloud forests and high grasslands in Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru are its only home, and temperatures there routinely fall below freezing.
Q 17The mountain tapir differs from every other tapir species by having which kind of coat?
Thick and woolly
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.
Q 18Which sound is one of the most common calls tapirs make to one another?
A shrill whistle
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.
Q 19Tapirs mark their forest paths and territories by spraying what onto plants along the way?
Urine
Urine left on plants tells other tapirs who has passed, which helps neighbours avoid a violent meeting. Their territories often overlap all the same.
Q 20Malayan tapir forests in Thailand and Malaysia have been widely cleared to plant which crop?
Oil palms
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Q 24Teeth of the extinct giant tapir were first found on sale in Chinese drug stores under which name?
Dragon bones
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.
Q 25The English word tapir comes ultimately from which language once spoken along Brazil's coast?
Tupi
Tupi was once a lingua franca across colonial Brazil, yet Brazilians today know the tapir by a non-Tupi name, anta.
Q 26Besides mainland Southeast Asia, the Malayan tapir survives in the wild on which Indonesian island?
Sumatra
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.
Q 27A 15-year study radio-collared Baird's tapirs in Corcovado National Park, in which country?
Costa Rica
Costa Rica hosted the Baird's Tapir Project from 1994 to 2009, tracking the animals' social lives and habitat choices on the Osa Peninsula.
Q 28Mountain tapirs seek out which natural feature to top up on the essential minerals they need?
Salt licks
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.
Q 29Malayan tapirs often have a cloudy haze over which part of the eye, one reason they see poorly?
The cornea
The cornea is thought to cloud over after repeated exposure to light, so the tapirs lean on their excellent hearing and smell instead.
Q 30Especially thick skin on which part of a tapir's body helps it survive an attack by a big cat?
Back of the neck
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.