Did you know that there is an animal called the tapir? Though the tapir can best be described as resembling a pig but with long snout, it actually belongs to the family of horses and rhinoceroses. Scientists describe its appearance as a “short prehensile trunk which is really an extended nose and upper lip. This eclectic lineage is an ancient one — and so is the tapir itself. Scientists believe that these animals have changed little over tens of millions of years. They are nocturnal animals equally comfortable in water as on land and are vegetarians.
Not only does it come as a piece of new information to many of us that the world we live in is shared by these tapirs, it comes with the words of warning that they maybe disappearing even before we get to see them. They inhabit parts of Latin America and in Asia are found in Malaysia, Thailand and may wander into India along the border shared with Myanmar.
Patricia Medici a wildlife conservationist says, “I have dedicated the past 20 years of my life to the research and conservation of tapirs in Brazil, and it has been absolutely amazing. They’re massive. They’re powerful. Adults can weigh up to 300 kilos. That’s half the size of a horse. They are gorgeous. Tapirs are mostly found in tropical forests such as the Amazon, and they absolutely need large patches of habitat in order to find all the resources they need to reproduce and survive. But their habitat is being destroyed, and they have been hunted out of several parts of their geographic distribution…tapirs are extremely important for the habitats where they are found. They’re herbivores. Fifty per cent of their diet consists of fruit, and when they eat the fruit, they swallow the seeds, which they disperse throughout the habitat through their faeces. They play this major role in shaping and maintaining the structure and diversity of the forest, and for that reason, tapirs are known as gardeners of the forest.”
Medici tells us of the many ways in which the tapirs are being studied. “Besides the GPS collars, we are using another technique: camera traps. This camera is equipped with a movement sensor and it photographs animals when they walk in front of it. So thanks to these amazing devices, we have been able to gather precious information about tapir reproduction and social organization which are very important pieces of the puzzle when you’re trying to develop those conservation strategies.”
There are four types of tapirs; lowland tapir, Baird’s tapir, mountain tapir and the Malaysian tapir. They seem sturdy animals for they have survived eons of time and so one should think they would figure out how to survive this greedy period in human history, but, “The problem of tapir extinction is not just to do with threats to their habitat. When you drive around and you find dead tapirs along the highways and signs of tapirs wandering around in the middle of sugarcane plantations where they shouldn't be, and you talk to kids and they tell you that they know how tapir meat tastes because their families poach and eat them, it really breaks your heart…”
Says Medici, “I started my tapir work in 1996, still very young, fresh out of college, and it was a pioneer research and conservation programme. At that point, we had nearly zero information about tapirs, mostly because they’re so difficult to study. They’re nocturnal, solitary, very elusive animals…”
Medici wonders if her attempts to save the species of tapirs will have any results at all. Can one reason with human greed? “Although,” she says, “I’m struggling with all these questions in my mind right now, I have a pact with tapirs. I know in my heart that tapir conservation is my cause… we must disseminate what we learn. We have to educate people about tapirs and how important these animals are. And it’s amazing how many people around the world do not know what a tapir is…”
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