FACTOID #151: The five countries with the highest coffee consumption are also the five countries whose citizens trust one another the most. Coincidence? Probably.
A tapir is a large, browsing animal, roughly the shape of an over-sized pig but with a short, prehensile trunk. Size varies with different species, but most are about 2 metres long, stand about a metre high at the shoulder, and weigh between 150 and 300 kg. Tapirs belong to the family Tapiridae and the genus Tapirus.
The tapir family is old by mammal standards: the earliest fossil tapir dates to the early Oligocene, and Eocene rocks from as long as 55 million years ago contain a wide range of tapir-like animals. Their closest relatives are the other odd-toed ungulates: horses and rhinoceroses.
Although tapirs were once widespread, only four species endured into the modern world: three from Central and the warmer parts of South America, one from South-east Asia.
Tapirs are forest animals that love water. Although they frequently live in dryland forest, given access to lakes or rivers tapirs spend a good deal of time in and under the water, feeding on soft marine vegetation and taking refuge from predators. The Brazilian Tapir often sinks to the bottom of a stream and walks along the riverbed to feed. In forests, they eat fruit, leaves, and berries.
The three lowland tapirs are largely nocturnal and crepuscular. The smaller Mountain Tapir of the Andes is generally diurnal, but all four species react to hunting pressure by retreating deeper into inaccessible regions and becoming more nocturnal and more secretive.
Although they are taken by tigers and other big cats, bears, crocodiles and anaconda, humans are by far their major predator. Hunting for meat and hides has substantially reduced their numbers and more recently massive habitat loss has resulted in the conservation watch-listing of all four species: the Brazilian Tapir is classified as lower risk, near threatened; both Baird's and the Malayan Tapir (which may exist in Borneo) are classed as vulnerable; and the Mountain Tapir is endangered. But in some unexplored inner places in China, it is said that some kind of tapir is existent, which has not been proven yet.
Adult tapirs are large enough that they have few natural predators, and the thick skin on the backs of their necks helps to protect them from threats such as jaguars, crocodiles, anacondas, and tigers.
Tapirs tend to prefer old growth forests and the food sources that can be found in them, making the preservation of primary woodlands a top priority for tapir conservationists.
Tapirs appear in the initial section of the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." The first section of the movie, entitled "The Dawn of Man," is set in the Pleistocene era, and shows Brazilian tapirs grazing in the background.
Another thing that tapirs share in common is their feet; all tapirs have four toes on each front foot and three toes on each back foot which are splayed and capped with hooves, allowing them to walk more easily on soft and muddy ground.
The tapir is generally an herbivore, as the diet consists of fruits, leaves, stems, sprouts, small branches, grasses, tree bark, cane, melon, cocoa, rice, corn from plantations, and even aquatic plants, but the tapir will also eat aquatic organisms which it will even walk along the bottom of a stream or river for.
While the tapir’s unique adaptations have helped it to survive in its environment, as in many other cases, human activity and technology has led to the decline of the magnificent animal, and the tapir may disappear before its importance is fully understood.
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