Don't Call Me a Pig

Saturday-Sunday, May 3-4, 2025

Don’t Call Me a Pig

Today’s special animal friend is the tapir, four (or five, one is disputed) species in two genera of the family Tapiridae. Tapirs belong to the order Perissodactyla, which includes horses and rhinoceroses. It’s because of their feet, which have odd numbers of toes unless they don’t; don’t overthink it.

Acrocodia indica, the Malayan tapir, lives in Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand. This tapir is distinguished by a white coat from behind its shoulders to near its tail, sort of like a wolf in a lamb’s fleece. The main threat to this endangered species is deforestation, but they are sometimes hunted, although they are considered unclean by the Muslim populations in their habitat because they resemble pigs, which are in the order Artiodactyla.

The remaining three or four species of tapir, in the genus Tapirus, are native to South America, with the range of Baird’s Tapir, Tapirus bairdii, reaching into Central America and Mexico. The South American tapir, Tapirus terrestris, has the widest range. It is found throughout the Amazon River basin. These are large animals: a full-grown male can reach 8 feet in length with an average weight around 500 lbs. They have dark brown hides with thin fur. People hunt them for meat and hides. Natural predators include crocodilians, large wild cats, and the green anaconda.

Tapirs have a remarkable, prehensile nose. They use it like an elephant's trunk to pull fruit, leaves, and branches from trees and shrubs and to pick up seeds from the ground. The Malayan tapir has the longest proboscis. Tapirs are excellent swimmers. They often spend hours in the water, foraging on aquatic plants, and the nose can be poked above the water surface like a snorkel. They are generalist herbivores with large foraging ranges, making them an important factor in seed dispersal for many plants in their habitat.

Tapirs are a solitary species and reproduce very slowly. Females have only one baby at a time, and the gestation is 13 to 14 months, depending on the species. The infant weighs about 15 lbs. It will nurse for about six months. Their lifespan is 25 to 30 years. Tapirs have 40 to 44 teeth which most closely resemble those of a horse. Combined with their size, the teeth can make them dangerous to humans. In 1998, an inexperienced zookeeper in Tulsa lost an arm when she got between a mother tapir and her baby.

The South American tapir, with its very large range, is considered Vulnerable by IUCN. The other species are Endangered. They are kept and bred successfully in captivity.