It has short legs and a very short tail. There are four toes on each of its front feet and three toes on each of the back ones. The toes are widely separated. Each one is covered by a thick layer of a protein called keratin, which creates a hoof. The Malayan tapir's bulky appearance and short legs may give the impression that it's a slow and lumbering animal. This impression is very wrong, however. The animal can run fast when necessary.
It's also a great swimmer and diver. The video above is a camera trap one. In this setup, the video camera isn't controlled by a person. It's triggered to start filming by an animal's movement in front of the camera. The camera is placed in an area that's known to be frequented by the desired species. The Malayan tapir is generally a solitary animal, except when a female is rearing a calf. It's occasionally seen travelling with an adult companion, however, as shown in the video above.
This companion may be a relative. The animal's preferred habitat is dense forest that has a permanent body of water. It spends most of its time near or in this water. The tapir is strictly herbivorous.
It feeds on leaves, young shoots, fruits, and aquatic vegetation. Most of its feeding is done at night or at dawn and dusk. It has small eyes and poor eyesight, but its hearing and sense of smell are excellent. It finds its food by smell. The tapir creates an intricate network of paths in the forest as it forages for food. Tapirs mark their paths with urine to indicate that they are part of their territory.
The stool that they drop contains seeds from the fruits that they've eaten, which enables plants to spread from one area to another. The Malayan tapir curls up in deep undergrowth during the day to sleep. In this position, its colouration makes it look like a large rock and helps to protect it from an attack. The animal may also take naps during the night. The tapir has few predators, but it's sometimes attacked by tigers.
Its defence mechanisms are its abilities to run, stay underwater for a minute or more, and inflict a serious bite. The animal can run fast and quickly force its way through forest containing thick branches. This type of environment often slows or blocks a tiger's passage.
The tapir also has tough skin which acts as a barrier against a predator's teeth. Malayan tapirs become sexually mature at around three to four years of age.
Males mature a bit later than the females. Mating may occur at any time of year. The mating ritual begins with a courtship in which the male and female circle together, nip each other's bodies, and make a variety of vocalizations. These vocalizations include whistles, clicks, and snorts. Courtship may be quite a lengthy event.
When the time is right, the animals mate. A single baby is born after a long gestation period of thirteen months. The baby is known as a calf. Twins are born very occasionally. A calf is ready to walk soon after birth, which helps it to avoid predators. Its mother won't breed again for eighteen months to two years. Tapir calves have a very different coat colour and pattern from the adults. When a calf is standing next to its mother, it often looks as though the baby has been paired with the wrong mother.
The infants have a brown coat with white stripes and spots. This dappled appearance helps to camouflage them in the filtered light entering the forest understory. The juvenile markings of a Malayan tapir calf disappear when the youngster is between four and seven months of age. The age at which the calf leaves its mother to live independently is uncertain and seems to be variable. Some calves leave when they are only eight months old. On the other hand, others stay with their mother for a year or more.
The tapir may live for more than thirty years, although a maximum age in the twenties seems to be more common. World Tapir Day occurs on April 27th each year. Its goals are to raise public awareness about tapirs and to raise money for their conservation. I've written many articles about endangered animals.
When I describe why the animal is endangered, the explanation is nearly always the same—human activity. As the human population continues to increase in size, more and more animals and plants will likely become endangered. The population status of the Malayan tapir and its relatives is worrying.
Malayan tapirs are in trouble due to deforestation in their natural habitat. Forest is being destroyed by logging, by clearance of land for agriculture, and by flooding of land due to the creation of dams for hydroelectric projects.
These activities are affecting many other types of animals in many parts of the world. The tapir is also hunted for meat and its tough hide, but deforestation is having a far more serious effect on its population. Predation by tigers is relatively unimportant in reducing the animal's numbers compared to habitat loss and fragmentation. The tapir's low reproductive rate makes it hard for it to recover from a disaster.
A zoo is not the best environment for an animal. Some zoos perform useful jobs, however, such as breeding Malayan tapirs. Jeffery J. According to the IUCN, a assessment the latest one showed that only 2, mature Malayan tapirs exist and that the population is decreasing.
Conservationists are trying to protect the tapir, but the desire of humans to obtain new land is a major problem. Conservation action plans are needed in some areas where the animal lives. Where the plans already exist, they need to be followed. Zoos are often criticized, but the best ones have at least one useful function. They are sometimes able to breed endangered animals, such as the Malayan tapir.
At first glance, it may seem like a tapir is a combination of animals. Tapirs also have rounded bodies that are larger in the back than the front, making it easier for them to cut a path through thick forest. All tapirs are herbivores, eating everything including seeds and fruits, leaves, tree bark and aquatic plants. As they move through their forest habitats, tapirs disperse the seeds they eat through their scat.
This helps forests regenerate and spreads the seeds of certain slow-growing trees with very dense wood — the very trees most important for sequestering carbon. In several of these forests, there is an important wild almond tree known as Dipteryx panamensis. These trees have some of the largest seeds in the forests; they are slow-growing trees with dense wood, which means they also store the most carbon. Without tapirs, there would be fewer wild almond trees, and less carbon locked away in the Five Great Forests.
Without tapirs, there would be even more cascading effects on forests—fewer plant species and fewer wildlife species that depend on those plants. Those effects can be felt all the way up to the canopy. The globally endangered Great Green Macaw primarily eats and nests in wild almond trees.
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This taxon group also includes Equidae the equids — such as horses and zebras and Rhinocerotidae the rhinos. Tapirs will often run into the water to escape from predators, and some species will also only poop in the water to avoid their scent being detected. Tapirs are fast swimmers and will often use their trunk like snouts as a snorkel when diving deeper, closing their nostrils to avoid water getting in, however they mostly swim with their heads out of the water.
They use a doggy paddle stroke or use the bottom of the lake to propel themselves along.
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